For Jason Kukla, reliability has never been only about keeping machines running. Before he became a consultant, Kukla was a farm kid in North Dakota who enjoyed working on vehicles and equipment.
After high school, he planned to become a diesel mechanic. Someone encouraged him to study mechanical engineering instead, pointing out that it could give him more career options while still allowing him to work on vehicles in his spare time.
That decision led to a career spanning more than 25 years in the power industry, food manufacturing, mining, aggregate facilities and other industrial environments. Kukla quickly transitioned from mechanical engineering into reliability, maintenance and operations leadership before bringing that experience to BDB Solutions as a consultant.
Years inside those facilities taught him that having dependable equipment is only one aspect of running a successful operation. Companies also need a consistent way to do the right work, at the right time, with the right people, tools, and precision and what can be learned from the results.
Reliability engineering helps determine the right work and timing, while formal work management processes help companies use their available people, time and resources more effectively. Employees then need clear expectations and workable processes so those decisions are put into practice every day.
Bringing those pieces together has become an important part of Jason Kukla’s consulting work. He helps companies strengthen manufacturing and process operations by improving production, uptime and maintenance performance while building teams that can sustain those improvements even after BDB Solutions leaves.
Getting to the Root of Operational Problems
Over 15 years in full-time leadership roles, Kukla saw how teams could spend their time and energy solving the wrong problems. An unexpected equipment failure, for example, might be repaired, but lack of precision techniques and root cause thought processes could lead to repeat or similar failures in the future..
He also saw how a lack of documentation could create additional problems down the road. If a similar issue came up again, but the previous team had failed to document the solution, the new team would have little useful information to work from and could find themselves troubleshooting the same issue from scratch. Additionally, the lack of documentation can make it difficult for teams to identify high cost or high frequency failures that deserve additional root cause analysis.
Recording what happened and what was learned gives teams the information they need to make data-based asset management decisions.
Kukla found that meaningful operational improvement did not overnight. In his experience, it could take six months to a year and a half for new processes, habits and systems to become a natural part of how a team worked.
After implementing similar programs in multiple facilities and companies, Kukla transitioned into industrial consulting, where he helped organizations work through many of the same challenges he had encountered himself.
“Credibility does not come from a title, degree, or papers on a wall,” he said. “It comes from living through some of the challenges you wish to help your clients through.”
For him, consulting is not about walking into a facility with a set of answers and expecting a team to automatically follow them. It starts with understanding how the organization operates, where problems tend to come up and what is getting in the way of increased performance.
In many cases, industrial organizations are dealing with more than one issue at a time. Budgets, production demands, staffing and maintenance needs all compete for attention. Solutions that sound good in theory must also hold up under those real-world conditions.
Turning Maintenance Decisions Into Measurable Results
Industrial reliability involves more than responding when equipment fails. The maintenance decisions made before, during and after the work all influence how effectively a company’s resources are used.
Kukla sees maintenance as a connected process. Companies need to identify problems, prioritize them, professional plan the work, schedule it, execute it with precision, document what happened and use that information to make better decisions the next time.
A weakness at any point in that process can lead to wasted time, missed priorities or recurring problems that could have been avoided. Kukla describes the goal as “doing the right work, at the right time.”
That means simply completing more work may not result in improved reliability. A team can stay busy while spending its limited time on lower-value tasks and leaving more consequential problems unresolved.
At BDB Solutions, Jason Kukla starts by identifying the problems standing in the way of improved production, lower costs or higher operational availability.
If a recurring equipment issue is limiting production, it may need to take priority over routine work. A plant losing time to repeated breakdowns may benefit more from eliminating the underlying cause than continuing to repair the same failure. In other words, resources should be directed where they can have the greatest impact.
Used together, better work selection and better execution can produce measurable operating results. Kukla has seen this approach increase production and operational uptime while reducing the cost of producing goods for operating industrial facilities.
Technical knowledge remains essential, but its value comes from knowing how to apply it to real operating problems and turn it into processes people can consistently use.
“Our desire to connect people to solutions through shared experiences and sustainable processes that have been perfected through many years of experience gives us a competitive advantage,” Kukla said.
He describes those techniques as “battle tested,” reflecting on the years spent applying them in operating facilities and learning what works under real pressures.
Ultimately, reliability means more than preventing equipment from breaking. For Kukla, it means helping an organization make better decisions about where to focus its time, solve the problems that matter most and learn from the work it has already done.
From Consultant-Led Change to Team-Owned Improvement
Technical work can show a company what needs to change, but Kukla believes employees are the ones who determine whether those changes last.
“People are the most valuable assets in an organization,” he said.
That philosophy is central to BDB Solutions’ approach. Rather than simply delivering solutions to clients, the company involves employees in developing the very systems and practices they will ultimately use.
Kukla works alongside employees to establish clear expectations, align around the same mission and provide them with the tools and knowledge needed to improve their own work.
“We help companies be part of their own solution. We recognize and appreciate that with this approach, changes are adopted significantly faster and we can quickly work ourselves out of a job,” he said. “This is the goal.”
That is also why Kukla sees his role more as a coach than a traditional consultant. He wants to work alongside employees as a “reliability partner and teammate,” helping them build the capability to solve problems themselves.
Some of Kukla’s most meaningful professional moments have come not from a single technical achievement, but from watching people and teams grow both personally and professionally.
Those outcomes, he says, matter just as much as improvements in equipment performance. Better equipment can improve a plant, but stronger teams can continue improving it even after a project is complete.
How Shared Purpose Bridges Deep Divides
For consultants building their own teams, Jason Kukla encourages them to surround themselves with people who share their values. Technical ability alone, in his view, is not enough.
“Skills and abilities cannot overcome deficiencies in areas such as integrity, hard work or valuing people,” he said.
Kukla experienced that firsthand shortly after joining a new company and finding himself in the middle of a union contract negotiation. During the negotiation, the company locked out its hourly employees and asked salaried workers to keep the facility operating.
For months, Kukla worked 16-hour days without a day off. Each morning, he drove through a line of frustrated employees who had been locked out of their jobs.
Eventually, the company and union reached an agreement, and most employees returned to work. But the end of the dispute brought a different challenge: people who had spent months on opposite sides of a conflict now had to work together and find a way to move forward.
“Realizing that our similarities are likely more abundant than our differences helps us to connect to a purpose greater than ourselves and work together toward common goals,” Kukla said.
The experience gave Kukla valuable insight into union environments, but it also reinforced the importance of connecting with people on an individual basis.
Operational improvement often requires people with different responsibilities, experiences and viewpoints to agree on what matters most. They may begin on opposite sides of an issue, but progress depends on finding enough common ground to make step-changes together.
Kukla does not expect consulting engagements to be free of conflict or difficult circumstances. In fact, he sees those challenges as fundamental to the work.
“The nature of our business is challenging,” he said. “Without challenges, our company would not exist.”
