Category: Manufacturing

Plant Managers – Friday Plant Walks– Hot Work Today I’m talking about Hot Work, as in spark-producing activities such as welding, cutting, and brazing. This is basic fire prevention and protection. (I didn’t intentionally hit all those words from OSHA 1910.252 – sometimes you just get lucky.) In a manufacturing plant, you always have repairs,…
Read more

Any equipment you install is going to need spare parts – components fail or wear out. Delivery times over the past few years have gotten longer. Parts that vendors previously kept in stock are no longer on the shelf. You can’t always depend on getting that spare you need to get your line back up…
Read more

Plant Managers – Friday Plant Walks– Confined Spaces Do you have Confined Spaces in your plant? I’m talking about the OSHA definition of confined spaces, not cramped closets. You thought of silos, didn’t you? (Ace of Clubs.) I mean confined spaces like silos, mixing vessels, reactors, material receivers, packout bins, day bins, pellet traps, cooling…
Read more

How is the version control on your projects? Are your contractors, engineers, and management all looking at the latest revision of the project prints, scope documents, and schedules?Of course! That’s a given, right? Not necessarily. I was on a project, in a support role, where the project sponsor requested several significant changes directly from the…
Read more

Plant Managers – Friday – Safety Moments Do you start every meeting with a safety moment? Do you ask if anyone has a brief safety topic to share? Offer one yourself? For most meetings, it can be something informal. Just a quick 30-60 second share of something relevant: Morning production meeting or weekly leadership team…
Read more

Project Scheduling What’s your success rate on capital projects?  Usually on time? On budget? If you commit to a Total Installed Cost (TIC) of $450k and a line downtime (DT) of 22 days, do you make it? What’s the over/under bet the Maintenance guys have running?  30 days? Typically, you do your best estimate on…
Read more

Project Cost Tracking Are you on top of your project spend? If you work for a large company, you may have to do monthly forecasting and accruals, and have a forecast accuracy metric that gets reported up. I did that for years. I feel your pain. I had a great spreadsheet I used for entering…
Read more

This post is about 2 aspects of “project safety” – safety during the installation and safety of the finished project. Installation safetyYou’re probably on top of this, but here are a few highlights, whether it’s contractors or your own in-house folks: Equipment/Machine safetyHere I’m talking about the safety of the finished project.You really need your…
Read more

Plant Managers – Friday plant walk – Floor Presence Are your folks surprised when they see you out in the plant? Or does somebody come check on you when they don’t – “Hey. We haven’t seen you all day. You OK?” The biggest step change I saw in a manufacturing plant happened when the leadership…
Read more

Fire extinguishers – quick story first. When we used to shut down for holidays, we’d keep a security guard on site those days. As HSE Manager, I always did one last plant walkthrough before leaving. This time, I saw flames coming out of an extruder throat. Turns out there was a piece of plastic left…
Read more