Do you know a way to track each time a worker touches the power plant? (Exclusive solution in this post!)

How great would it be to offer a number to your management team on how many times the plant/equipment was manipulate by the staff successfully? How great would it be while performing an observation to have the steps where the workers are actually touching the plant highlighted in some way (not just critical steps)? How great would it be to spread out the jobs that have the greatest chance for significant error throughout the team, instead of isolating a couple of groups in the department to perform the bulk of the risk-important work? How great would it be to be able to talk in a pre-job brief about how many times this procedure actually has opportunity for status control issues? I thought up this solution about 4 years ago and everyone (including root cause teams) I've shared it with has thought it was a great idea, but were worried on how to implement it or potentially, sell its value. In this post I am giving it to you to help me implement with your workforce, and I believe our community would be interested to hear about your perceived value of this extra tool.

The solution - you heard of it here first!

I call it the "procedure manipulation count." It is simply a number count of how many steps in the procedure manipulate the plant or equipment you are using for that particular procedure. Each step that touches the plant would have a small hand icon next to it. All of these hand icons would be counted and the number posted on the front of the procedure where level of usage, procedure title, revision number, and any other data you have on that procedure makes sense to have on the cover page.

How can I implement this idea?

Every procedure gets revised at some point. When a procedure goes through the revision or change process,  just add the hand icon to the steps that manipulate the plant - lift/land leads, open/close/throttle valves, switches toggled, buttons pressed, etc. Create a block on the cover page to put this total number.

Practitioner perspective

Being able to tally which procedures were performed and how many manipulations each had would be a pretty powerful tool we currently do not have to tell us how many manipulations were performed correctly per month. Does anybody know how often their plant or equipment in it gets manipulated each day? This could be a way to track that. Would you find the number to be more useful when tracking procedure errors per manipulation, rather than simply using worker-hour rates? Errors per manipulation sounds like a more accurate number for measuring procedure success or improvement.There could also be a way to track procedure use and adherence using this count. Ideas?

Leadership perspective

When performing an observation, formal or not, having specific portions of the procedure highlighted that you should want to see how they are handled and prepared for seems like something important to be watching for and ensure discussions happen and the team is prepared for the (please forgive the term) man-machine interface. When scheduling teams for work, this would allow you to be more careful to parse out the manipulations more evenly, so one team of workers isn't getting the bulk of the risk-important work.

Worker perspective

It's nice to have something specific to talk about in the prejob brief - primarily the job is about preparing you to actually manipulate the plant equipment in the first place, right? I see value in exposing the actual steps inthe procedure that do that function.

Your thoughts?

I am interested in other ways having a procedure manipulation count would value the organization. Can you think of any? Please share by commenting. I also want to know if you think this would be a waste of time. If I see the pushback clearly I might change my mind on how impactful I think this could be. Awaiting your feedback. I'm not sure how this would fit into a valve-lineup data sheet, but I'm sure each checked valve position could be counted.

Some videos:

For a (fictional) dramatic video on following procedure in stressful times click here

Click here for a funny IT video for the procedure on how to fix your computer - "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"