I’m a lower level manager, and my company has tons of issues to say the least. I’m constantly trying to push ideas that everyone agrees needs to be done. The problem seems to be upper management. There’s a fear that’s obvious to most employees including our office staff of taking risks to improve or repair machinery.
For instance we know that our instruments are not calibrated correctly or non-functioning but our plant manager refuses to authorize repairs. Our thermocouples are all 10+ years old and their typical life span is 12 months. Our pressure sensors are just as old and constantly shorting out. Our maintenance crew had to disable our high pressure cut offs to keep it running.
However the excuse I keep hearing from maintenance is a refusal to pay for the repairs, and when I approach the plant manager he says he can’t justify it because we’re doing so well. To be fair we do really well with our faulty equipment, but it shouldn’t be this difficult.
I had even fixed a programming issue at one point hoping that it would be noticed as an improvement but was disciplined due to it being risky and “outside my duties.” Please if anyone can tell me how to change this culture because I don’t know how long I can remain at this company if they don’t switch to a problem solving mindset.