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Writer for Nip Impressions
Thursday, November 28, 2024 1:45 pm
The Human Resources Department serves in a defensive role in most companies. Its purpose is to keep the company from being sued and to tamp down disturbances amongst the employees. At least that is the way I see it. But read on, there is a bit more.
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Thursday, November 21, 2024 1:45 pm
The title of this column is playing out right now in the packaging segment. Lightweight recyclable packaging is winning out over traditional packaging--and this is being accepted in the markets as an improvement in quality. This column is something of a continuation from last week with a slightly different slant.
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Thursday, November 14, 2024 1:45 pm
Or, in other words, would significantly improved quality make for higher profit margins in the pulp and paper industry? Can we make a paper company into the equivalent of Christian Dior or Estee Lauder through quality improvements?
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Thursday, November 7, 2024 1:45 pm
When many think of quality, their mind immediately goes to specifications. Is the moisture correct? How about smoothness? Coating quality? Pin holes? These matters are all important, but even more important is the integrity of the deal.
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Thursday, October 31, 2024 1:45 pm
Sometimes quality can be better than necessary.
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Thursday, October 24, 2024 4:00 pm
Every manufacturing facility I have ever known has energy in the tare. What is tare? Pallets, drums, totes, tires, empty trucks and so forth. Pallets, drums, totes, and (used) tires (P,D,T &T) are considered a nuisance. Empty trucks may be another matter.
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Thursday, October 17, 2024 4:00 pm
I predict our grandchildren will be thriving on nuclear energy and using our then obsolete windmills as amusement park rides.
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Thursday, October 10, 2024 4:00 pm
When I look back on what has happened in my lifetime, both at work and at home, I see ever increasing energy uses, some of which may not be smart. Computers and the Internet, and all the ancillary issues that go with these (cloud computing, server farms and so forth), are the big hidden users that did not exist when I started working in 1970. When I started working in 1970, there was not a desktop calculator, let alone a computer, in the entire company. There was one pitiful copying machine that could copy one page at a time. Faxes had not been invented or at least were not widespread. This was a company that fabricated steel products--the biggest user of electricity was arc welders. OSHA was a new idea and had not promulgated any regulations.
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Thursday, October 3, 2024 1:00 pm
I think the answer to the title question would have been "certainly" a couple of years ago. It does not seem to be so solid now. And, of course, it depends on what types of electric vehicles we are talking about. Electric fork or clamp trucks seem to be a certainty. Over the road vehicles (automobiles, trucks) may need a qualifier based on use.
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Thursday, September 26, 2024 1:00 pm
The last phase in our capital project is ramp up. We already covered this for tissue last week. Ramp up is never over. Don't put an end date on it.
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Thursday, September 19, 2024 1:00 pm
Last week, we talked about planning. I am just moving on down the schedule this week to "Check Out and Commissioning." The potential for screwups here is as great as in planning. Bring in a fresh OCD person to manage these functions.
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Thursday, September 12, 2024 1:00 pm
It helps to have OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) in order to plan a capital project, even a small one. Or as the joke says, OCD should be CDO, so the words are in the correct alphabetical order. I can tell you this--if you don't have a touch of OCD, you will never be a successful capital project manager.
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Thursday, September 5, 2024 1:00 pm
This week, I want to talk about buying equipment and services. The first thing I want to talk about is keeping your relationship with the sellers at arm's length.
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Thursday, August 29, 2024 1:00 pm
The answer likely lies with a definition of your role in the company. If you are a typical project engineer within a mill, it likely starts when you are given a request from an operating department. Listen carefully to them, they are your customer. Yet bring your own professionalism to the party, too. This means don't listen to them wide eyed and gap jawed as if they have all the answers.
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Thursday, August 22, 2024 1:00 pm
By Fos, the Rat: Well, I can't believe it, but another month of Pulp Rats is almost over. It has seemed extra short this year, perhaps because there are only four columns, not five as there are some years. I would like to wrap up talking about Force Majeure.
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Thursday, August 15, 2024 1:00 pm
By Fos, the Rat: Jim was telling me a story I could hardly believe. Let's have him tell it this week. Take it away, Jim.
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Thursday, August 8, 2024 1:00 pm
By Fos, the Rat: I thought this week I would walk out on the Annual Pulp Rat Convention floor and talk to some who are not being heard by the Great Council.
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Thursday, August 1, 2024 1:00 pm
By Fos, the Rat: Once again, I am interviewing Mr. Jim at the Pulp Rats' Convention. This year the convention is being held in the deep south.
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Thursday, July 25, 2024 1:00 pm
It starts when you get out of bed in the morning. Do you make your bed or not? Depends on your personal standards. Likewise, how you keep your work area, how you keep your automobile, whether you steal from others or lie, whether you put tools back where you found them or in a better place, these are your standards. So don't say there are no standards--you started having standards before you went to school.
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Thursday, July 18, 2024 1:00 pm
We've talked about policy and regulations for three weeks, let's finish out the month with two columns on standards. Standards are so ubiquitous; we don't even notice them.
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Thursday, July 11, 2024 1:00 pm
There are many regulations we encounter in our work life that are good. There are others that seem to be a power kick for the regulators. Here is one I would have us adopt a papermakers if I were King.
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Thursday, July 4, 2024 1:00 pm
The last week of June this year may be the most important week in regulations and general policy in the last century.
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Thursday, June 27, 2024 1:00 pm
If you have not heard of EUDR by now, surely others in your company have. This is the European Commission Regulation on Deforestation-free products. Subtitle: EU rules to guarantee that the products EU citizens consume do not contribute to deforestation or forest degradation worldwide. The operative word here is "worldwide." Thus, no matter where you make your forest products, if you want to sell it in the EU, you must comply.
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Thursday, June 20, 2024 1:00 pm
Quick--what is your image of your purchasing team? I'll bet it is them sitting in their offices with their nose stuck in a computer or a document. Or perhaps on the phone. Back in the days when I worked in a mill, I spent a good deal of time wandering around the mill. It didn't make any difference what my job was, I wandered around the mill in order to understand it from a detailed and overarching perspective. This made me better at my job, whether it be engineering, maintenance, technical, power house manager, whatever.
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Thursday, June 13, 2024 1:00 pm
Forty years ago, I was up to my eyeballs in a major rebuild of the paper machine where I worked. One day, a couple of months before the actual commencement of the shutdown for the rebuild, I got a call in my office. It was a truck driver that was in the administration building. He had walked there from where he left his truck, about two miles down the road (no cell phones in those days). I went out to see what I could do for him. He took me to his truck. It was barely off the two-lane highway. One set of the trailer's rear axle tires were gone, and the wheel hubs were worn down to the axle. We are talking about two axles.
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Thursday, June 6, 2024 1:00 pm
These days it often takes a deep dive to understand honest and ethical, the first two attributes I mentioned last week. When it comes to honesty, you can't be selective. You are either honest or you are not--throughout all aspects of your life. Hence, purchasing managers, especially, need to be honest throughout all aspects of their life.
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Thursday, May 30, 2024 1:00 pm
This is simple and in this order...
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Thursday, May 23, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, May 16, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, May 9, 2024 1:00 pm
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...
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Thursday, May 2, 2024 1:00 pm
"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.
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Thursday, April 25, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, April 18, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, April 11, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, April 4, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, March 28, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, March 21, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, March 14, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, March 7, 2024 1:00 pm
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).
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Thursday, February 29, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, February 22, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, February 15, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, February 8, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, February 1, 2024 1:00 pm
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?
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Thursday, January 25, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, January 18, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, January 11, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, January 4, 2024 1:00 pm
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.
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Thursday, December 28, 2023 1:00 pm
I am speaking about the capital projects sector for 2024 and going forward a bit.
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Thursday, December 21, 2023 1:00 pm
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...
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Thursday, December 14, 2023 1:00 pm
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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Thursday, December 7, 2023 1:00 pm
The Cop28 Climate Change Conference currently underway in Dubai seems to have hit a couple of speed bumps on the way to banning fossil fuels.
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Thursday, November 30, 2023 1:00 pm
There are a group of Mennonites in southern Ohio I love dearly. I try to go visit them a couple of times a year for a few days. My next visit is planned for the weekend of 16 - 17 Dec 2023. When I get there, my phone goes off and into my bag. There is no electricity. Heat is wood. Farming and local transportation is done with horses. They do use the bus system for long-distance traveling, and they do this quite often. Sounds inconvenient? It is the price of freedom.
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Thursday, November 23, 2023 1:00 pm
The question for you, dear reader and marketer, is what are we missing? Our typical product cycle is to try out a feature or a concept and gauge the reaction. Then it lives or dies. But let's turn this around. You may know better than we do what the next innovation in digital marketing to the pulp and paper industry should be. Sometimes one can be so close to something that they miss the obvious. We want to make sure that is not happening to us. Hence we want to hear from you.
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Thursday, November 16, 2023 1:00 pm
Often, the barriers to innovation boil down to an unwillingness to take risks. If those risks involve technological changes, that just adds to the resistance. In the last thirty years, communications, for instance, have gone through startling changes, more changes than had been seen by humankind from the first written and spoken words up until then. These changes profoundly affected the pulp and paper industry and have blown by as if we were sitting still.
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Thursday, November 9, 2023 1:00 pm
One of the major barriers to process innovation is knowing too much about the subject. Knowledge of a subject sets up unconscious barriers to innovation. Think of learning to drive an automobile. I have taught three teenagers how to drive. In all three cases, their first time behind the wheel experience resulted in eyes darting about rapidly. As they became familiar with driving, the eye darting subsided because they learned what was important and dismissed everything else. Same is true of a process or procedure. If you know it with your eyes closed, so to speak, you are dismissing a great deal of information that might be helpful in innovation. It's the "we've never done it that way syndrome." There are a couple of ways to shortcut this.
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Thursday, November 2, 2023 1:00 pm
A couple of seemingly disparate items strike me as we start to think about innovation and strategy this month. The first is the press release a couple of months ago announcing the coming departure of the chairman of a major pulp and paper company. Reading between the lines, one could infer that this chairman and the board are out of ideas as to how to take the company forward. The other is the current popular human resource acronym, DEI, which stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. As with most such acronyms, this one is too simplistic and is itself too inclusive, likely being applied where it is not appropriate.
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Thursday, October 26, 2023 1:00 pm
At their best, all the sensors, software and specifications you have pertaining to quality are merely aids to your personnel as they produced quality services and goods at your company. This is true for even the most sophisticated (buzz word alert!) AI systems. If your people and culture are not tuned in and dedicated to producing quality, it will not happen. In the pulp and paper industry, we have not done such a good job of starting where quality starts--with our people and our culture.
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Thursday, October 19, 2023 1:00 pm
Everything that comes onto your mill site must meet established standards before it gets to your mill site. Multiple suppliers must be in place to provide quick backup if a primary supplier fails. I would dare say the plan for the quality of the product you will make in a month or two must be already established now. When it comes to the quality actions needed from the human component of your operation, that must be planned six months to a year before you need it.
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Thursday, October 12, 2023 1:00 pm
Little did I know when I wrote the column last week, "Quality is Attitude" that there would be a sequel, but here it is. We usually think of quality, and concomitant attitudes about quality, as we think of suppliers serving customers. So, what would you say about customers providing outstanding, unheard-of quality to their suppliers? Would you infer from this that such a company, if it existed, would have quality service so ingrained that their customers could rest assured the quality they receive in service and products is top notch? I have found such a company and unabashedly want to tell you about them and their president.
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Thursday, September 28, 2023 1:00 pm
As we continue to think about quality in a different way this month, I have to say quality is attitude. I have seldom seen an angry person produce quality services or products. Likewise, I have never seen a glib, happy-go-lucky person produce quality either. Let's face it, quality is serious business. It can be a complicated business, too.
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Thursday, September 28, 2023 1:00 pm
Many of us recognize quality and we love to acquire it. Few of us love to create it. We'll explore the love of quality and how to create it this month.
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Thursday, September 21, 2023 1:00 pm
It has been widely reported recently that companies are "quietly cutting" employees. If you are not familiar with this term, it means your job has been eliminated, but you haven't. You'll be put on the sidelines until a place can be found for you. Likely your department has been eliminated, but to avoid paying you a severance package, you are "being placed in inventory" until a position can be found that matches your perceived skill set.
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Thursday, September 14, 2023 1:00 pm
Extremely touchy subject, but I have never let that stop me before. DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is at least on the lips of every human resource professional today. What should be your posture and response?
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Thursday, September 7, 2023 1:00 pm
It is being reported that Smurfit, of Dublin, Ireland, and WestRock, of Atlanta, Georgia, are in merger talks. These are interesting times indeed. I recall in 1986 when Smurfit bought Container Corporation of America (CCA) with the help of Morgan Stanley. In fact, the combined company name included Morgan Stanley. Long term, that merger did not end well.
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Thursday, August 31, 2023 1:00 pm
There is a new norm for work attendance. It was caused by the Covid lockdown, and if you are not aware of it, you must have been under a rock for the last three years. In the hourly ranks in our mills, it seems to be working itself out. Mills are adopting the twelve-hour day and hourly workers in many cases are working fourteen twelve-hour days out of each twenty-eight days, on various schedules of day and night shift. Maybe this will work and be widely adopted. That is a few hours more than a straight forty hour per week job, but who works forty hours per week. Salaried staff schedules have been more of a problem.
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Thursday, August 24, 2023 1:00 pm
Fos the Rat says, "Every August, I look forward to taking over Mr. Jim's column and providing the insights of the Pulp Rats. This year we've done things a little differently, but here we are, already, at the end of the month. I hope you have enjoyed these interviews as much as I have enjoyed doing them. Let's see what Mr. Jim has to tell us today."
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Thursday, August 24, 2023 1:00 pm
Fos the Rat says, "We've been talking to Mr. Jim this month and he has told us some amazing stories. Let's see what he has for us this week."
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Thursday, August 10, 2023 1:00 pm
As we discussed last week, this year we are using a different format. Fos the Rat is interviewing Mr. Jim in a side room at the Pulp Rat Convention. Last week's story relayed matters that can happen within one's company. This week, we'll move outside the walls and see what can go wrong when an outside company has an evil intent.
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Thursday, August 3, 2023 1:00 pm
Fos, the Rat, says, "I am going to use a slightly different format this year. Yes, the rat convention is going on as usual, but I have reserved a private room off the main convention floor and Mr. Jim has agreed to being interviewed concerning some of the situations he has seen over his fifty plus year career in this industry."
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Thursday, July 27, 2023 1:00 pm
How clean is clean? What are we willing to pay for things to be incrementally cleaner?
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Thursday, July 20, 2023 1:00 pm
Let's not forget what business we are in. Simply, that is to manufacture, convert, and/or print paper. There are many other activities in which mills must engage but these must be our focus--this is how we spin our invoice printer. I have lived through nearly the entire environmental era to date. Perhaps it is time for a new third party to rise up and help us with the entire environmental equation.
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Thursday, July 13, 2023 1:00 pm
By and large, we all want the same thing for ourselves, our families and our friends. Clean air, clean water, and a pleasant view of nature. In most places governments have disincentivized (read: one can go to jail) managers from disobeying when it come to environmental regulations, so regular and repeated excursions from what is expected are matters of reasonably respecting compliance requirements. So why do your mill's neighbors have an adversarial relationship with your mill? There can be several reasons for this.
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Thursday, July 6, 2023 1:00 pm
Conditions should not be us and them, but that is what they have become. My solution? At this point, you have no choice but to be absolutely transparent to your local neighbors and be cautious of the traveling rabble-rousers. This situation is no fault but our own.
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Thursday, June 29, 2023 1:00 pm
This is environmental/regulations month here at Nip Impressions. I must ask, what has changed in the past year? It appears the rhetoric has become shriller, the regulations more onerous and the government has become more invasive.
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Thursday, June 22, 2023 1:00 pm
Last week we talked about the missing doctor blades and how the solution cost the mill serious money through their own inability to manage their needs. I have a story from the other side of this issue as well.
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Thursday, June 15, 2023 1:00 pm
If I am being a bit hard on purchasing this month, it is because I often see purchasing as a silo in our mills and corporate structures. Purchasing is often thought of as price, terms and conditions. There is a lot more that purchasing can do for the mill. It is not all about pricing, terms and conditions.
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Thursday, June 8, 2023 1:00 pm
Today's purchasing professionals are much better than the ones I ran into early in my career, but there is still room for improvement. A great purchasing executive must be a strategic and tactical thinker, also keeping their company's ESG goals in mind.
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Thursday, June 1, 2023 1:00 pm
We can't start talking about purchasing without talking about corruption. This is my 54th June in industry, and I wish I could tell you that corruption in purchasing has diminished over this period, but I can't. One bright spot I know is a mill in Texas where a new purchasing agent eliminated all hats, pens, calendars, meals...any freebies provided by the vendors and suppliers. Sounds harsh? Once the camel gets its nose under the tent, there is no stopping.
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Thursday, May 25, 2023 1:00 pm
No, this is not a retirement announcement. I am merely pointing out that we are done with energy for this month. We'll be back with more energy columns in December. If you haven't figured it out yet, Nip Impressions features energy two months per year--May and December. Energy is that important. As I have said before, it has been important for my entire career and will be far into the future.
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Thursday, May 18, 2023 1:00 pm
I have been beating around this energy trends subject all month. It is time for me to get serious and give you some help. Are there any sure-fire energy solutions you can do now and not be required to back track later? Let us think about it for a minute and see what we can develop and what can be set up for continuous improvement.
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Thursday, May 11, 2023 1:00 pm
At this point in time, we have forgotten that using electricity as a widespread energy form is an almost new experience. My own grandparents, for instance, were born (early 1880's) when electric lights were brand new and only in the homes of the rich in concentrated urban places like New York City. It was years before they experienced these in the US Midwest. While electricity brought many advantages and improvements to life, business and industry, it was not without its negative side effects, too.
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Thursday, May 4, 2023 1:00 pm
Let's take a walk down nostalgia and fantasy lanes this week. I am so frustrated with energy issues; I see no other choice.
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Thursday, April 27, 2023 1:00 pm
It is energy month again, and, quite frankly, I am getting tired of talking about energy matters. As I have stated before, the first energy crisis occurred about four months after I received my undergraduate degree. We have been talking about energy ever since, not only in our mills, but in life in general. At first, the issue was, do we have enough? At the time, known petroleum reserves were about eight years, which would have gotten us to 1981. Obviously that was incorrect. Later in my career, climate change became the issue when the powers that be decided we face global warming instead of global cooling.
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Thursday, April 20, 2023 1:00 pm
When I was young, binge drinking seemed to be the personally destructive behavior of choice. In one mill where I worked, the staff was in the habit of having a beer blowout after every shutdown day. I don't know if that is still a widespread activity or not. Of course, drugs, especial fentanyl, are widespread today and kill many people. We have had this tragedy hit close to us. Today, however, I want to talk about overeating and weight. We all, including me, struggle with this.
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Thursday, April 13, 2023 1:00 pm
What I am about to describe can happen anywhere...work or home. Most of us would say our life is more important than material goods. However, here in our neighborhood, two people have lost their lives in the last six months because, in a rapidly developing situation, they thought saving material goods was paramount. They didn't have time to think it through.
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Thursday, April 6, 2023 1:00 pm
In recent years, companies have started emphasizing safety off their premises as well as at work, for anything that causes an employee to be missing from work is a cost. It is just a matter of how big that cost is.
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Thursday, March 30, 2023 1:00 pm
As we start safety month, we could almost repeat the issues discussed last month in maintenance month. We'll spend some time this month talking about attitudes as well. Attitudes have a lot to do with safety.
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Thursday, March 23, 2023 1:00 pm
We started off this month talking about obsolete equipment and processes left in place. This is not what I am talking about now. Here, I am talking largely about installed spares.
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Thursday, March 16, 2023 1:00 pm
There has been a vast improvement in the selection of materials for new capital projects during my 53-year career. There are new materials, upgrades to old materials and a general view of specifying materials more suitable for the application now than in prior decades. If you have read me for any length of time, you know I like galvanized steel for all structural components (indoors and out) and stainless for nearly everything else where appropriate in pulp and paper mills. Granted, there a bleach plants constructed of titanium, but those are more the exception than the rule. I like plastic, too. CPVC pipe, FRP tanks are your friend.
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Thursday, March 9, 2023 1:00 pm
Last week, we talked about the first step to better maintenance. That was cleanliness, as in wholesale cleanliness by removing dead and obsolete equipment. To me, the next thing after cleanliness is oil and grease--lubrication.
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Thursday, March 2, 2023 1:00 pm
If you have taken an automobile to a dealer's repair shop lately, you have no doubt noticed how clean and neat the facility is. I have been wheeled into operating rooms in prestigious hospitals with more clutter and cobwebs than one will find in the typical auto dealer repair shop. Automobile dealers work at a high charge out rate, out of a rate book. They have a constant struggle between the profitability demanded by their owners and the resistance of the customers to high prices. The repair shop is a profit center. The repair services provided by the maintenance department in your pulp or paper mill are treated as a cost center, a cost center the mill does not want to own. Big difference from the automobile dealership repair shop. Perhaps this is at least one reason why pulp and paper mill maintenance centers are so unkempt and trashy.
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Thursday, February 23, 2023 1:00 pm
Your mill has all sorts of motive equipment, from skid steer loaders to clamp trucks to over-the-road transportation providers. The outside suppliers who maintain this equipment have a tremendous amount of valuable information that can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes on a monthly basis. The key is how you approach accessing this information.
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Thursday, February 16, 2023 1:00 pm
At this point the decision to go electric in your motive equipment or trucks is an easy one. If the vehicles are used for short range and there is charging time, go electric if it makes economic sense. For everything else, don't even bother doing the calculation.
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Thursday, February 9, 2023 1:00 pm
A lot of money leaks out of a company through the travel budget. It does not need to be this way.
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Thursday, February 2, 2023 4:00 pm
It is transportation month and I will be the first to admit that this column will likely not make you any money. But occasionally, we should have a little education and fun without worrying about ROI, eh? Over the years, when I have brought up these matters with individuals, I get, "Well I didn't know that." So perhaps I can give you a little education, too.
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Thursday, January 26, 2023 4:00 pm
If you are building statues or monuments, when the construction is done, you are done. We don't build statues and monuments in the pulp and paper industry.
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Thursday, January 19, 2023 4:00 pm
If you have spent your career in the shelter of large, rated companies, you likely have not experienced this problem. Some explanation. By "rated" I mean a company that carries a rating by a Dun & Bradstreet, Fitch, or some other recognized rating agency. Most such companies fund their capital projects through their corporate treasury.
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Thursday, January 12, 2023 4:00 pm
Very long time reader Dene Taylor wrote me a note after last week's column (Week of 9 January 2023 "First Number Uttered") suggesting the second number uttered is the time to complete a project. Mike Higgins offered a similar comment. This is so true and in line with the items I covered the first week of this series, the week of 2 January 2023. I have seen so many schedules blown over the years that they are uncountable. The worst are the rebuild schedules, for they are the ones that take an operating machine out of production for a period of time, endangering the customer base. There is a lot of pressure to make these as short as possible.
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Thursday, January 5, 2023 4:00 pm
Capital project budgets suffer from "first number uttered" syndrome. Whatever project cost number gets to the executive suite first is the one that every decision hangs on. That number may arrive from a back of the envelope exercise, an article read in a trade publication, or some other unresearched source. The corollary to "first number uttered" is, "surely we can beat competitor x's reported costs." More projects have been doomed by these kinds of thinking than any other I have ever known, and remember, we're talking about my fifty-three-year career here.
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