Out of Whack

by R.T. “Chris” Christensen

Whack. Out of Whack. This is something we need to discuss. Our problem is that I always hear you talking about it but you don’t seem to do anything about it. When things just aren’t going right, I hear all of you say “It is out of Whack.” When the machine is not producing quality parts, “It’s out of Whack.” When the inventory is short of parts you say “It’s out of Whack.” When your car doesn’t run right, “It’s out of Whack.” When your plant can’t make its deliveries on time, something is “out of Whack.”

I find this interesting as all of you seem to know what “out of Whack” really is. I have even capitalized "Whack" because it must be worthy of being capitalized for all the importance it seems to have. Everyone seems to know what it is, but for some strange reason we only hear about it when things are out of it.

My question, then, is, “What is ‘In Whack?’ ”

Out of Whack always seems to be something that is bad. We talk about it when things aren’t going right. But for some reason, I have yet to find anyone who knows how to fix it. In other words, “How do we get back ‘In Whack?’ ” Think about that one.

Shouldn’t “In Whack” mean that things are going well? Shouldn’t “In Whack” be something we strive for?

And this leads to the discussion of the problem. If we know what “Out of Whack” is, then why don’t we know what “In Whack” is? For a lot of us just having a machine running is what we call desirable; and that’s what we shoot for. But define running. How well is the machine running? How good are the parts coming off the machine? Are we running at a Six Sigma level?

The first time I came across the idea about “In Whack” was several years ago when my neighbor was complaining that his car wasn’t running right. He had a Chevy with a 400-cubic-inch engine, and this was in the days before electronic ignition. He was pulling a boat with it and getting about 9 miles per gallon and it had just been tuned up by the neighborhood Chevy dealer. Being a garage hot rodder, I knew the importance of blueprinting an engine so that all the tolerances were in the middle of the range and all cylinders had the same volumetric size (CC’ing the heads so to speak) and everything was balanced and matched. Would this work on a tune-up too?

We went to work on it. We realized that the tune-up specifications gave the range of acceptable tune. You could be less than precise and still get the car to run fairly well. So if the tune-up specs gave a range, wouldn’t the desired settings be in the middle? The middle is what the dealer specified but you could be a little above that or below that and still have a car with an “acceptable” tune. Not wanting just “acceptable,” we went to work.

The settings from the dealer were in the range of tune-up specs but that is all. So we reset the engine to be in the center of the tune ranges. I set the distributor dwell to the middle to the factory setting with a dwell tach. Then I set the timing to the middle of the setting range and then adjusted the carb for maximum vacuum. But when you twist one knob, the others go out of whack. So with the dwell tach, timing light and vacuum gauge all still hooked up I went back and reset the dwell as it was now off a few degrees — still in range but off a few degrees and not centered. Then the timing and then the carb. And I did the cycle again as everything was still a little out of whack. I did this four times and now all the settings were in the middle of their respective ranges. Then we road tested the car. The car now went like a streak of #@$%. And it was getting 13 mpg with the boat behind it; 19 without the boat.

What happened? Not realizing it, I had defined what “In Whack” was and set that car up to not just in the acceptable range but to the max point in the setting range; “In Whack.”

Whacking your plant
So, what about your facility? How do you set up your equipment? Do you set things to be just in the range and quit? Are you satisfied when it is just running and everything is in the Green area? Or are you tweaking this thing so that it is running the best that it can? This is Six Sigma — running to the best of the equipment’s capability to produce quality identical parts, with no variation from run to run and all settings in the mid point of the range.

This is “In Whack.” This is setting your equipment to run at its maximum, best-performing mid-range settings. If you don’t have optimums, start by setting to the middle of the ranges as these are probably the optimum. Document what you are doing and record the performance of the equipment.

Here is a good use of thermal imagery, noise and vibration studies, temperature and load analysis and ultrasound measures. Use these tools not only to measure the condition of the equipment but also use these tools to set up the machines to perform at their best.

You have now defined “In Whack” for your plant. You know where it is and how to set it up. Whack away!

R.T. “Chris” Christensen is Emeritus Faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is Emeritus Director of Operations and Maintenance Management Certificate Programs at the Universities Executive Education Department in the School of Business. Contact Coach Christensen at 262-613-0073
E-mail: crchristensen1958@wi.rr.com.

This article appeared in the February/March 2007 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright 2007.

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