BOHICA

About the Book

70% of change programs fail to achieve their goals. Furthermore, according to numerous business research articles, most management-inspired improvement and cost-saving initiatives waste time and money and de-motivate employees. MATT POLASKI and his band of unsung maintenance engineering heroes are nearly burn-out, trapped in the ‘circle of despair’ at the Mornington Dairy Plant. Instead of continuing to patch one breakdown after another, they propose a reliability improvement project to improve plant performance and their mental well-being. Matt realizes his marriage may even survive if they are successful. JIM CHAMPION, Mornington’s Site Manager, also wants to improve performance, but he can’t wait as long as Matt’s plan requires. Jim’s approach leads to a temporary improvement followed by a major catastrophe.

About the Author

Rob Probst has forty years of industrial manufacturing experience, working in engineering and operations management roles as well as reliability engineering, consulting and training. A mechanical engineering graduate from UC Berkeley, he has authored articles about operational behavior, maintenance, and engineering practices. Rob and his colleagues at Bay Milk Products initiated a reliability improvement program that achieved world-class accreditation in 2009, and he subsequently co-created a software program that predicts the return on investment for best-practice maintenance reliability program implementation. He recently completed a Master’ of Business Studies degree at Massey University and is a certified maintenance and reliability professional. He lives at Ohope Beach in New Zealand, where he works as a consultant and pursues study and writing projects related to organizational behavior.