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This is simple and in this order...
Over fifty years ago, when I first entered the pulp and paper industry, the first energy crisis was underway. As a young person early in my career, I and others in my peer group thought this was new, exciting and solvable. Fifty years later, it is old, boring and never ending. So, let's end this month's energy trends' columns with three truths.
Worldwide, the overall energy policy in place is derived from ideas one hundred years or more old. For the last century, all we have been doing is putting band aides on this, leaving us with a mishmash of regulations that do nothing to make a consistent, effective policy. We will just focus on highway transportation here and ponder a bit how a sane policy in this corner of the energy world would have a profound impact on energy usage everywhere, even inside our mills.
When I was a teenager on the farm in southern Ohio, the electric line came across the pasture to our home. It was about 1/3 of a mile from our house to the road where the main electric line was and is. I have an aerial shot of our homestead hanging in my office which was taken about 1970. In it, one can clearly see the electric pole near our house with the bright gray, almost white, transformer near its top. Let me tell you about this transformer...
"The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power" by Daniel Yergin is the definitive book on the history of oil up until the current energy craziness we have been experiencing for the last fifteen years or so. It is also a great documentary available for free on YouTube. I highly recommend the documentary. Unfortunately, "The Prize" stops where modern energy follies start.
This is exactly the same column I delivered up to you for the last week in March. At that time, I was talking about housekeeping and how it relates to maintenance. Housekeeping is strongly tied into safety, too. Read it again, please. This is the column I promised you last week. Your reaction will be either scoffing at it or believing it--there will be no middle of the road reactions. If you decide to believe, contact me and I will help you, at no charge, to get started.
The US and European pulp and paper industries are in the throes of two distinct and separate mergers (or takeovers, if you prefer). One is being driven from Europe, the other from the United States. Despite noble efforts from the respective executive suites some employees will be upset. This has happened in similar situations before.
In most jurisdictions, it is illegal to hold a cell phone while driving a car. Yet in most paper mills, one does not see this sort of restriction, indeed, anything close to it. Should we have similar restrictions in mills? I think so...there is almost no place in a pulp and paper mill where a phone is appropriate.
I must admit I did this back in the day, and I recently heard this practice still happens. Hourly workers are usually protected from this, with or without unions, so it is a practice where one needs to focus on the management ranks. I am talking about ridiculously long working periods.
Observing mill engineering departments for a few decades, I've noticed a haphazard application of well known nationally and internationally recognized standards in small, mill originated upgrade projects. I'll even admit that, decades ago, I likely participated in this negligence. Standards are created for a reason.
This is the column I promised you last week. Your reaction will be either scoffing at it or believing it--there will be no middle of the road reactions. If you decide to believe, contact me and I will help you, at no charge, to get started.
I don't think I have ever been around more depressing pulp and paper mills than those experiencing poor maintenance. The only thing that can drive morale down faster is producing a product in a declining market (anyone remember newsprint?). Sadly, many senior managers view maintenance as a cost.
Sometimes I think maintenance suffers from "macho disease." We talk about changing out press rolls, monitoring machine bearings and other sorts of "big deal" maintenance projects. I would hate to think how many times I have been exposed to pump and motor alignment. Yes, it is an important subject, but it is not everything. There are other things that can shut you down, too (or at least cause you to lie).
It is my favorite month because maintenance can pay huge dividends. Or maintenance can kill you if you ignore it. I've told many mill related tales of maintenance in this column over the years. For some reason, when I started to think about maintenance for this year's column series, I went back to my youth and some maintenance disasters that took place when I was a teenager at home.
We have spent the last three weeks talking about transportation issues and challenges in the pulp and paper industry today. About a year ago, I had an epiphany in the transportation and warehousing area. I went out and got a "patent pending" status on it. Due to all my other activities, I only feebly marketed it. At the time, my idea was to sell the idea. In the meantime, I have now decided to present it here for you to ponder.
Jerry Seinfeld has an old joke that goes like this. He is out driving in a rural area. He passes a log truck. Then he meets a log truck coming towards him. He asks, "If the people over here need logs and the people over there have logs, couldn't they just call each other up and avoid driving these logs all over the place?" It got a big laugh. Of course, real life is not this simple.
To borrow from last week, I don't care if it is the bar of soap going down the conveyor or the shipment of pulp from Brazil, the costs in transportation is the onloading and the offloading. These termination points are also the points most susceptible to mishandling and accidents. Granted the load must be secured appropriately, depending on the application, but you'll find the problems and the costs are at the ends.
It is transportation month here at Nip Impressions, and there is a lot to talk about. I almost titled this first column of the month "Transportation Follies" but then thought better of it. There certainly are many transportation follies in the headlines these days. However, I thought I would spend this first column of the month in a cerebral fashion. What do you think of when you think about transportation?
I promised you this column last week. Everyone in a capital project is under pressure. The mill team is under pressure to bring the project in on budget (remember how you kept shaving the budget to get the project through the board of directors?). The suppliers are under pressure to win the project at the highest possible profit for them, and will promise the moon, if they don't have to put it in writing. And this is all good, for it gives an old guy like me a steady income as an expert witness in project lawsuits. The grayer and thinner my hair has gotten, the more I can charge.
I have served as an expert witness in several capital project cases (dare I say disasters?). How do projects end up in this condition (disasters)? There only seem to be two major causes of such fates. The first is believing in magic and the second is dishonest dealings. We'll cover magic this week.
There have been several capital decisions in recent years that have left me scratching my head. In these cases, a great deal of funds have been expended to clean out old paper machine halls for the express purpose of installing new machines of a different grade.
Back when I started in the industry, one bought everything for their new machine, printing press, or flexofolder/gluer piecemeal. Yes, there was a primary machinery supplier, but the capital project team and the project engineers bought everything else separately and integrated it all into one concomitant system. Due to growth of the industry, project teams became less experienced, and the system fell apart. Startup dates and startup curves were missed because of missing but vital components. Major machine suppliers had ready excuses for not meeting performance guarantees and there was a lot of finger pointing.
I am speaking about the capital projects sector for 2024 and going forward a bit.
I am sure you have heard the story many times about how I lost all steam producing capability in a northeastern Ohio mill in the winter of 1987. It was early February and temperatures had plunged to -20 F. I was not at the mill at the time, but no difference, both the powerhouse and the maintenance departments reported to me...
As you have probably noticed by now, I have taken a bit of a cynical view in this power and energy month here at Nip Impressions. I tend to do this when secular subjects become so widespread and accepted as the whole truth, all other theories be damned. Experience and logic tell me that such widespread, cult like belief must have a few cracks somewhere and those cracks must be explored. Thus, I will continue down this path this week and next.
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