Because machine uptime was important, the company encouraged maintenance engineers to respond to breakdowns as quickly as possible [emphasis added]. Even so, overall performance didn’t improve. Only after the company started keeping and analyzing records machine by machine instead of person by person did it realize [why]. Engineers … would make a quick fix and move on to the next machine. Each … breakdown [was] patched three times before it was finally solved. In a way the engineers were doing exactly as asked: they were solving problems quickly.
