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The fit of things, be it a case for your iPhone, you into your jeans, the width of a roll of paper, the piping connection to a fan pump or an airplane flying halfway around the world and putting its front tire exactly on the stripe down the middle of the runway at the correct elevation are some of the most important qualities we seek in this world. Yet oft times we treat mere dimensions as mundane.

After all, dimensions are mere arithmetic, possibly a little algebra, maybe a little trigonometry, but nothing more, correct? There are no sophisticated calculations here; there is no use of fancy physics or chemistry. It is merely dimensions, something anyone can do.

Folks, we live in a three dimensional world and dimensions are thus everything. Yes, it is great and magical (at least to us old timers) how the touch screen works on a smart phone, but the thing you would notice quicker than how it works is how it fits to the rest of the phone. We take these things for granted.

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Whether you manufacture paper, chemicals or paper machines, dimensions matter. As we focus this month on quality here at Paperitalo Publications, I thought it worthwhile that we spend some time on this perceived mundane subject. The problem is it is not mundane but often it is treated as such.

I'll give you an example from construction. Way back early in my career I ran a little company whose main service was detailing steel. Let me explain what this means. A structural engineer designs a steel structure, say a paper machine building. They specify the size of each piece of steel and make general notes as to the types of connections to be used at each mating joint.
The next thing that happens is this is sent out for bids to a steel fabricator and erector. The winning bidder then hires a steel detailing company to make shop drawings and erection drawings so the structure can be built, for the structural design drawings are in no way complete enough for this necessary step. By the way, piping goes through a similar process.

Back in the day, this work was all done by hand, and even with computers today, it still has a significant manual component. So, thirty-five years ago we would successfully bid for the detailing work on a paper machine building. At the time, such a project could be won for about $25,000. The structural design drawings would be received and they would usually number less than twenty drawings, maybe as few as ten. Our output, however, as detailers, would often exceed 100 drawings.

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At the time, I estimated that a paper machine building had about 100,000 sets of mating holes that were bolted together. So what do you think would be a good job, quality-wise, on getting these correct? Ninety-eight percent sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Well, do the math, 98% correct means you missed 2,000 bolt holes. From the field, in those days, the fabricator/erector would back charge you $50 per missed bolt hole. Ninety-eight percent quality in this case means you were back charged $100,000 on a $25,000 project. One can't stay in business performing this way. On top of that, no one will ever give you a job again if your reputation with them is this poor. In our shop, we thought 20 missed holes, or an accuracy of 99.98% was the goal to reach. We worked hard at getting simple arithmetic right because it mattered. Simple arithmetic thrown 100,000 times to a team of ten people over just a few weeks is not a simple matter.

A bit later, working in a paper mill where the temperature could swing in a ten degree range and the humidity at the dry end of the machine could vary by 30 percentage points in a day, a person from the technical department came to the morning meeting one day asking if anyone knew where we could buy common tape measures accurate to 1/64th of an inch. We were having trouble meeting a customer's standards for finished roll width. It was quickly pointed out to this person not only the humidity problem but that our manually set slitters were not accurate within the tolerance required. I lost track of what happened to that issue, but it is another case of dimensions being important.

So, if you look around, you'll find dimensions are everything. Don't casually dismiss them when you think about quality.

Do you have an experience involving dimensional quality? We would love to hear about it. Please take our quiz this week here.

For safety this week, there are countless cautions related to dimensions in safety, from pinch points to vessel entry and beyond.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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