What is your favorite troubleshooting method?

I have written a book about, teach and regularly practice a variety of troubleshooting methods. Thus, I may be considered as much of a problem-solving expert as a web-handling one. I value troubleshooting skills even more than web literacy. Consider this: Even if you have read and understood every word ever written on web handling, you may still have difficulty solving many web-handling problems. Why?

Web handling might teach you how to recognize certain defects or troubles, and suggest some potential solutions, but the job isn't finished. For example, a wrinkle at an angle means “something is crooked.” That gets you started off on the right foot.

The crux of the problem is, however, to define precisely what is crooked. It could be that a roller is crooked, by simple misalignment. It could be that a web is crooked, by being baggy. It could be something else being “crooked”—such as the dryer having a temperature profile variation. At the end of the day, we want to be able to touch the specific element that is crooked and that is causing that wrinkle.

The next step is to sell this explanation to everyone involved so that there is a paradigm shift. Selling the cause and solution is usually the more difficult step, by far, of real-world problem-solving. If this diagonal wrinkle was caused by misalignment, we might have to do more than just realign that roller. We need to retool maintenance practices, then retool management's allocation of maintenance money and machine time to fix a systemic, rather than a specific, issue.

So how can you sell things most aggressively? You could point to an article or book which explains/sells this diagnosis and treatment for you. However, this may not be adequate to get the job done. A convincing demonstration is often the best route.

You could, for this example, say to your boss: “I understand this problem so well that I can make that wrinkle go in either direction. Which direction would you like the wrinkle to go?” Obviously, he/she is not going to want a wrinkle in any direction and will be wondering about your dedication to company goals.

You are just, however, setting them up for the kill. You say, “Look, I will move it from the front to the back.” (Web handlers will know how to do this by moving a roller mount.) “Now I will make it go away, but this is very difficult to do because we don't have the tools to do it properly.” Then you bring the mount back midway until the wrinkle disappears.

You then go on to explain what must be done not only to fix this roller, but to fix what is likely to be scores of others in the plant that are causing similar difficulties.

I, too, have set you up—by answering a more important question, the answer to which is that the hardest part of problem-solving is not usually diagnosis, it is selling the diagnosis and solution. To be fair, I will answer the original question as the “shape tool.” Now, you go look it up.

920/725-7671, drroisum@aol.com, www.roisum.com