Everything in life is something of a
crapshoot. Nothing that you ever do is completely predictable. Oh, sure,
you predict many things right. If you’re watching a baseball game, and
the count is 3 balls and 0 strikes, you can be pretty close to positive
that the next pitch is a called strike. But you will be wrong every now
and then. If you have a spare tire in your car, you are pretty sure that
you are covered in case of a flat. Two flats are beyond normal
expectation. One flat and a flat spare is your own fault. You should
have checked the spare. Had you done so, you would have changed the
odds. I don’t want to get too deep into probability, but if you have a
flat spare, the odds of you being inconvenienced are the same as the
odds for getting a flat tire on any particular day; probably about 1000
to 1 (figuring every one gets a flat every two or three years). If you
check your spare once a week or so, the odds of being inconvenienced by
a flat tire are probably now around 50,000 to 1 (based on getting more
than one flat at the same time, or having the spare lose air right after
you checked it. Wild guesses in all cases). 1k to 1 is pretty good odds.
But 50K to 1 is awesome! See how easy it is to play probability and act
like Mr. Spock?
What the hell am I talking about, you
ask? Everything you do on a copier or other machinery is guesswork. Some
is much better guesswork than other guesswork. A burned out lamp. The
technician, who I’ll call Tom Maliachi, guesses that replacing it will
fix the machine. The odds of the new lamp burning out right away are
incredibly low, since there are really no situations that cause that.
Tom is playing the odds, and they are greatly in his favor. Let’s take
a slightly different situation. Tom discovers a blown thermofuse. If he
knows nothing else about the copier, he could guess that this is just as
sure a repair as the lamp was for the previous example. A lamp is
probably nearly a 100% sure shot. But, if he installs a thermofuse,
turns the machine on and walks out of the room, what might happen? My
“guess” is that about somewhere between 1 in 3 to 1 in 10 of those
thermofuses will fail again, sometimes immediately. The reason, of
course, is that the thermofuse that failed the first time, was very
likely doing its job and protecting the machine against an overheat. In
some cases, the cause of the overheat, which is some other problem, is
still there and will blow the new thermofuse also. These are lousy odds.
The technician has to shoot for 100% as an end result. For this reason,
the technician does not turn his back on the machine, but observes it
carefully before concluding that the thermofuse failed for no particular
reason. Before he considers the machine fixed, he checks the wiring; no
pinched wires or frayed insulation. He examines the thermistor, the
fuser roller, and the bearings. He turns the machine on and carefully
watches the lamp and the ready light at the same time. If everything
works ok, and looks ok, then he relaxes a little bit. There is still the
suspicion that he did not really find the cause of the problem. But he
has done all he can, for the moment. Ok.
If you are wondering why I picked "Tom Maliachi" as the name
of my fictional technician, tough nuggies! If you know of him, or his
brother, drop me an email about our favorite radio show.
I’ve been fixing copiers for 27 years.
By now, you would think I know what the symptoms of a bad drum are. And,
of course, I do. Drums, for the most part, are moneymakers. For that
reason, they are also subject to dishonesty by some technicians. A
technician can often tell the customer they have a bad drum. Then, when
the technician returns with the new drum, he repairs the real cause of
the problem at the same time that he replaces the drum. I never want a
customer to suspect me of something like this, nor do I want to install
a drum that isn’t needed, even by mistake. To assure myself that this
won’t happen, I have a weird technique for troubleshooting copy
quality. I pretend that it cannot be the drum, no matter how obvious the
problem is. I carefully examine and/or clean the optics, slit glass,
etc. I inspect and evaluate the developer unit. I examine the fuser
unit, and/or stop a copy between the drum and fuser. I look carefully at
the lines on the drum to determine if the wiper blade could cause them.
When I do finally conclude that the
problem is the drum and only the drum, I go further. I determine that
there will be no other problem present after I replace the drum. If the
drum has scratches, I try to determine why. I don’t want to have the
new drum quickly develop the same scratches. If the scratches are
customer caused, I want to determine if the machine was jamming, and
solve that problem, before replacing the drum. If the scratches are
concentric, I want to be sure that they occurred because of age of the
drum and not because of something rubbing the drum, or frequent jams.
Only after I go through all these
prerequisites, can I tell the customer they need a drum, with full
confidence. I can be nearly 100% sure that I am making the right “guess.”
Since I did not see the drum fail, and was not there when it became
ruined, I am really only guessing. But as you can see, it is a highly
qualified guess. It is really the process of elimination.
There will be times that you arrive at a
machine that you have been told is jamming. Believe it or not, I have
known technicians, who would run 5-10 copies, and if they saw no jams,
would leave, and blame the customer for crying wolf. Sometimes they
would be right. If I consider a customer to be crying wolf, I am sure I
have plenty of proof (at least in my own mind.) In this example, I would
copy a long run. I would copy many 1 and 2 copy runs. I would let the
machine cycle down completely many times. I would turn the machine off
and back on again. I would test each cassette or feed position. I would
certainly test the bypass and duplex, if so equipped. If I have had no
problems, I would quiz the customer. Were they duplexing? Was it 14”
paper? Was it first thing in the morning? Was it regular paper, or
different stock? Did the operator see it happen, or just pass on a
message? I would look in the garbage for evidence of jams. I might find
a sky shot all crumpled up in the garbage. I might discover that it was
only on a Monday morning after a very humid weekend. After having
investigated and possibly exhausted all of these possibilities, I might
decide that the customer was crying wolf, or at least was not a careful
enough key operator. But not after 10 copies. Compare my technique to
the other guy mentioned on the jamming example.
This is where callbacks come from.
Lousy technicians have lots of callbacks.
Super technicians have some callbacks. It is very hard to blame every
callback on the technician. But many of them could have been prevented.
I believe that the thorough technician (No modesty here, whatsoever. I
am the thorough technician) will have incredibly few callbacks, by using
the techniques mentioned above.
The technician should not guess at the
cause of the problem, or at the likelihood of a repair. They should
investigate every possible cause, and eliminate all but one. Only then
can they confidently have an answer to the problem. I remember a
technician who replaced a drum on Monday. On Tuesday, he was called back
to the same machine and had to replace the drum again, as well as the
device that was supposed to prevent jammed paper from scratching the
drum. On Wednesday, he replaced the drum again, and repaired the problem
that caused the paper to jam in the first place. This is not fiction. I
remember this very clearly. The service manager was not particularly
observant. He should have briefed the technician and debriefed him again
after the first service call. I should also point out that, in this
company, the service manager had no budget and no specific incentive to
save money or operate efficiently. He reported to work and supervised
technicians, and was content to let the chips fall wherever (Boy, lots
of gambling analogies today!)
There are many times that you cannot
determine the cause of a problem. The more work you put into such
situations, the more confidence you can have in your diagnosis, even if
there is none. I suggest that you dig deeply into solving easy problems,
by being sure there is no underlying cause. Occasionally, you will find
an additional problem. As you become more and more thorough, you will be
able to more confidently be sure of who is crying wolf and who is not.
When you do make a mistake, you will find that they are so few and far
between, that you don’t let it bother you. I would estimate that I
ruin a drum, about once every 5 years. But I have been so accurate and
careful on my other work, that I accept that that goes with the
territory. Once in a while, I eat a drum or a board. And sometimes, I
don’t have to.
When I take a chance on a part being
correct, it is only after having narrowed it down so far, that there was
almost no other choice that made any sense. So, once in a while I’m
wrong.
I have no problem making this statement
to a customer. “I cannot find a specific reason why the machine was
misbehaving. However, I found a few things that weren’t quite right,
and took care of them. I have tested the machine thoroughly and it
appears to be working perfectly now. If the problem comes back, so will
I.” Customers accept this. I maintain my credibility at all times.
Philosophizing
So what else is new? I apply this method
of improving the odds to many things in life. It is the way you took
multiple choice tests when you were a kid; instead of guessing wildly,
you examined the choices, and eliminate done or two, and greatly
improved your chance of guessing right. Your managing a baseball team,
and every now and then you let your best hitter swing on 3 and 0,
knowing the odds are better than usual that it will be a perfect pitch.
You have a customer with a tired 6-7 year old machine. You know that you
can continue to keep it running. But you roll the dice and try to sell
them a new machine. Why? Because, at this age, it is almost a certainty
that someone will sell them one soon. It is almost also a certainty that
they won’t find any one else to service the existing machine. Both of
these conditions make this a much better probability for you than
attempting to sell a machine to someone else, whom you don’t have this
information about. That doesn’t make it a sure thing, but the odds are
tilted more towards you than they would be in some other situation.
Learn the right way by using the wrong
way.
When you apply thorough troubleshooting
techniques to problems, you will make some mistakes. You will often do
things that don’t need doing. In so doing, you will discover new ways
to do some of these tasks. You will also get a feel for some of these
methods. For example, a rookie technician cannot identify a bound up
developer unit, until he or she has cranked a few that aren’t bound.
They are also tight, but it takes a certain amount of experience to be
able to tell which is which, when only one is available. When Thomas
Edison was questioned about his many previous failed attempts to create
the light bulb, he replied “They weren’t failures. I learned 1000
different ways not to make a light bulb.” And then, there is the old
Arnold Palmer quote “People say I’m very lucky. You know what’s
funny? The more I practice, the luckier I get.”
