Designing Reliability Plans by Working Backward from the Decision You’ll Need to Make
The reliability plan that begins with today’s tasks and works forward toward an undefined future state is the plan that produces the parallel information economy described elsewhere in TMG’s writing: the CMMS that contains everything except the data the organisation actually needs, the ERP whose blueprints are beautiful and whose data outputs are unusable, and the project life cycle that delivers a product that the warranty subsequently absorbs the cost of. The reliability plan that begins with the future-state decisions the organisation will need to make and works backward through the data, processes, and systems that must be in place to support those decisions is the plan that produces usable outcomes. The technique that distinguishes the two is what the source conversation calls backward blueprinting. This paper sets out the principle, the failure modes it is designed to prevent, the working questions that operationalise it, and the organisational disciplines required to apply it consistently across new product development, asset management software implementation, and operational reliability programmes.