Theory and Example of Embedding Organisational Change: Rolling Out Overall Equipment Effectiveness in a Large Mining Company

Measuring availability and utilisation sets up the dynamics of a blame culture, siloed thinking and competition rather than collaboration. Availability and utilisation do not include rate losses, or quality losses. When overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is measured these additional losses are included, that identify far more opportunities for improvement. More importantly OEE is an overarching asset management measure, focused at a high level. Everyone should be focused on OEE, not just what is going on in their department. This paper will outline a well proven theoretical management of change model, and show how to change an organisation intent on arguing minor details, into an organisation focused on the big picture. This paper describes the change process steps, from convincing the CEO, to having OEE embedded in the DNA of the organisation. Details included in this paper are: the key steps to embedding change, how to convince a CEO to adopt OEE, and leadership styles to engage the entire organisation. This paper describes the four year journey from Availability and Utilisation to having OEE embedded in the organisation. A significant number of change programs in large organisations fail (Kotter, 2007). This identifies an organisational change process that has a theoretical basis, and demonstrates how this model was used successfully to implement a major organisational change.