Stop Being the Hero, Build the Habit

I used to chase every downtime fire on our drum and pail lines. It felt good to be the hero who found the bad sensor or tweaked a pneumatic valve. Throughput still sagged a month later because the little problems came back in new clothes.

What helped was getting boring and systematic. We put a 15 minute daily fault review at the filler: top three stops pulled from the PLC, quick root cause on the whiteboard, one small countermeasure assigned. We cleaned up the HMI to show plain language alarms and a next step. Techs got guardrails to adjust setpoints without waiting on me. We added two minute changeover checks for bung types and a weekly check on regulators and vent filters. Nothing fancy, just consistent.

The shift for me was leadership by cadence, not heroics. Protect the time. Say no to big shiny projects until the micro stops are under control. Give operators and techs ownership and a clear target, then get out of their way.

What simple habit or cadence made the biggest difference on your lines? What did you stop doing that freed up capacity?