4 milkshake September 2021
The Maintainers and Assistant Professor of
Science, Technology and Society at Virginia
Tech. “For instance, if a corporation isn’t
doing enough preventative maintenance, it
will ‘waste’ a great deal of time and money
on repairs. Many companies are decades
behind on developing good maintenance
practices.”
Vinsel says there is innovation-in-maintenance
and has been for the entire
history of industrial culture. What managers
must do is keep their eyes on innovations
that undermine maintenance. For example,
some systems are poorly designed in terms
of maintainability. These problems can
easily be addressed by asking questions
when adopting new systems like, “What is
it going to take to maintain this thing down
the road?”
Making Quality Job 1
One of Ford Motor Company’s most
famous taglines is, “Quality is Job 1.” The
motto encapsulated its intent on building
long-lasting, trouble-free vehicles. It is no
secret that the automaker has posted a
lengthy list of problems related to vehicles
within the Ford family of cars, trucks
and SVUs. The issues are not the kind a
117-year-old automaker likes to compare
next to its decades of industry-wide
innovation accomplishments.
Yet, there Ford was, trying to explain
why product quality was a reason some
customers were hesitant about the Ford
brand, especially the infamous introduction
of the overhauled Ford Explorer and
reincarnated Lincoln Aviator SUVs several
years ago. Among the tally of issues were
11 recalls for the Explorer and nine for the
Aviator. In addition, the Escape, Bronco
Sport, Mustang Mach-E and F-150 all had to
have pauses for additional quality checks.
“Wise leadership means always focusing
on the bottom-line and long-term value,”
Vinsel says. “Sometimes that means
keeping your eye on the ball with existing
products and services; other times it will
mean doing something new. The real
question is, ‘What end are we trying to
achieve?’ When you have that question
disruption instead of brand maintenance.
In fact, their book, one that has become
a must-read in a time of mass disruption,
starts by asking if everyone around you
worships the wrong gods. As historians
of technology, Russell and Vinsel are not
shy about arguing that this bent toward
technological perfection is making us
poorer, less safe and, if you can believe it,
less innovative.
“If we think of innovation as
improvement, I believe it’s very important,
in any number of fields—such as medicine,
healthcare and responses to climate
change,” says Russell, co-founder of The
Maintainers, and Professor and Dean of
the College of Arts & Sciences at SUNY
Polytechnic Institute. “But I worry that we
devote a lot of attention to innovation, at
the expense of the maintenance of existing
tools, knowledge and practices. There’s an
unhealthy obsession with ‘disruption’ that
has been cultivated by the champions of
innovation and that obsession deserves
some criticism.”
This outsized attention on innovation and
shiny new objects from the mainstream
media and advertisers continues to shape
consumer behavior. The continual fixation
with the rapid adoption of software
has put a greater emphasis on novelty
and innovation, which has resulted in
older technologies and patterns of work
being denigrated or ignored altogether.
All you have to do is look at the Texas
power grid disaster and collapse of the
Surfside condos in Florida as examples of
infrastructure neglect.
Do infrastructure breakdowns, like
the aforementioned ones that made
international headlines, mean that
innovation is the enemy of maintenance?
Russell and Vinsel say it is easiest to
answer this question when you think about
individual behaviors. If you spent all your
time and money buying new things for your
home—furniture, decorations, carpet, etc.—
would you have enough money for roof
repairs, annual inspections of heat and air
conditioning systems, and general upkeep?
The same dynamic occurs in companies
and in nations. “Whether an organization
spends too much time on maintenance
is largely determined by how healthy
and forward-thinking its maintenance
practices are,” says Vinsel, co-founder of
WHETHER AN ORGANIZATION SPENDS TOO
MUCH TIME ON MAINTENANCE IS LARGELY
DETERMINED BY HOW HEALTHY AND FORWARD-THINKING
ITS MAINTENANCE PRACTICES ARE.”
—LEE VINSEL, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SCIENCE,
TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, VIRGINIA TECH