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A Total-Plant Predictive Maintenance Program 377

inaccurate, distorted, or unjustified, but it is real to the individual. The reason, what-
ever it may be, must be identified before the supervisor can understand the employee’s
behavior. Too often, the supervisor disregards an employee’s reason for a certain
behavior as being unrealistic or based on inaccurate information. Such a supervisor
responds to the employee’s reason by saying, “I don’t care what he thinks—that’s not
the way it is!” Supervisors of this kind will probably never understand why employ-
ees behave as they do.

Another consideration in understanding the behavior of employees is the concept of
the self-fulfilling prophecy, known as the Pygmalion effect. This concept refers to the
tendency of an employee to live up to the supervisor’s expectations. In other words,
if the supervisor expects an employee to succeed, the employee will usually succeed.
If the supervisor expects employees to fail, failure usually follows. The Pygmalion
effect is alive and well in most plants.

When asked the question, most supervisors and managers will acknowledge that they
trust a small percentage of their workforce to effectively perform any task that is
assigned to them. Further, they will state that a larger percentage is not trusted to
perform even the simplest task without close, direct supervision. These beliefs are
exhibited in their interactions with the workforce, and each employee clearly under-
stands where he or she fits into the supervisor’s confidence and expectations as
individuals and employees. The “superstars” respond by working miracles and the
“dummies” continue to plod along. Obviously, this is no way to run a business, but it
has become the status quo. Little, if any, effort is made to help underachievers become
productive workers.

Reinforcement. Reinforced behavior is more likely to be repeated than behavior
that is not reinforced. For instance, if employees are given a pay increase when their
performance is high, then the employees are likely to continue to strive for high
performance in hopes of getting another pay raise. Four types of reinforcement—
positive, negative, extinction, and punishment—can be used.

Positive reinforcement involves providing a positive consequence because of
desired behavior. Most plant and corporate managers follow the traditional
motivation theory that assumes money is the only motivator of people. Under
this assumption, financial rewards are directly related to performance in the
belief that employees will work harder and produce more if these rewards are
great enough; however, money is not the only motivator. Although few
employees will refuse to accept financial rewards, money can be a negative
motivator. For example, many of the incentive bonus plans for production
workers are based on total units produced within a specific time (i.e., day,
week, or month). Because nothing in the incentive addresses product quality,
production, or maintenance costs, the typical result of these bonus plans is an
increase in scrap and total production cost.
Negative reinforcement involves giving a person the opportunity to avoid
a negative consequence by exhibiting a desired behavior. Both positive and