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So, you want to be a consultant
Well, after a few days, the Great Mother came back. She did not mention gorging herself and neither did anyone else. Great Mother, "We have gotten very far behind, and our time is almost up. Til, can you come forward and read the remaining cases? If we have time, we will take them up at next year's conference." Til came forward.
The Rats took a break for a couple of days. We found a pond for swimming and had a good time. On the way back to the meeting area, we went past a place where the Big Things eat food that they heat up very quickly. Out behind, there were bins full of discarded food, so we had quite a feast. The Great Mother got sick from gorging herself and was very embarrassed. The Great Mother always takes her role very seriously and is very conscious of her decorum. Gorging herself was out of character. She must have felt quite ill, for when we reconvened the Junior Mother was presiding. "Attention, please!" she called us to order. "The Great Mother is a bit under the weather and has asked me to preside over this session. Today, we are going to quickly look at cases where Big Things threatened the companies for which they work. Clerk, please read the cases."
After a brief recess, the Great Mother called us together again. "What is on the docket for today?"
After three lights, the Great Mother called us together again. "We have heard a particularly disturbing story," she began. "It seems as though the Big Things want to be known for protecting this whole place where we live, but some of them take what they call shortcuts at times. The RBI, or Rat Bureau of Investigation, has been looking into this. I'll let them explain." Phineas Kirby came to the front of the room...
By Jim Thompson interpreting for Fos the Rat ... Yes, it is August again and its is corruption month at Paperitalo Publications. We rats have observed in the past year that the human engagement in corruption is not limited to pulp and paper mills. This last statement may sound naïve, but one must understand our methods of communications are rather limited (basically just walking around and talking to each other) so we perhaps don't get all the information Big Things do.
As we wrap up Environmental and Regulations Month here at Paperitalo, we would be remiss if we did not mention the minefield that regulations relating to Human Resources have become.
Don't think you can turn regulations into a marketing advantage. Thinking that a customer base must buy a certain good or service and hence this will make an automatic market for you is a potential mistake.
The general intent of regulations is to keep order in society and keep the population safe. A dictionary definition of regulations is "a rule or directive made and maintained by an authority." My cynical version is this: "those who have power by fiat telling those who own assets what to do." Over the decades, we have seen many actions that follow my definition here in the pulp and paper industry.
A little regulation is probably good, but a lot of regulation chokes business to death.
Sorry about that, but the energy news is coming thick and fast for all of us these days. I am sure you remember old Jim telling you to carefully preserve your boilers, regardless of what form of energy they consume (I have also said these are the only types of idled assets to save). I hope you have heeded my advice. It appears the rapid transition to "Green Energy" sources appears to have some problems.
A tough subject and one all of us, not matter what side of the negotiating table we sit, should treat with respect, not forgetting our fiduciary duty.
Today, we need to know the delivery status of items way before their expected delivery date. We even need to know what ship they are on and where that ship is at any given moment. As shortages continue, this becomes even more important.
The purchasing department is an area of great opportunities. It is also a place where all the profits of the mill can be dribbled away, and a potential source of grossly unimaginable corruption. The purchasing department must be carefully managed.
As we wrap up this month on energy trends, there is one certainty over which you have complete control. That certainty is this...energy you don't use frees you from others' control. If we think of a pulp and paper mill as a "black box" this means that energy we use inside the mill that we generate ourselves frees us from the vagaries of the markets and external suppliers.
If you have read this column for any length of time, I am about to repeat something you have heard before. I am always in favor of removing obsolete and unused equipment quickly with one glaring exception. That exception is this: power plants.
The answer to dirty energy today seems to be electricity. For mobile transportation, cars and trucks, electricity moves the emissions from many points (tail pipes) to either single points (power stations) or theoretically no points (solar, wind and hydroelectric). The first thing we need to understand is that our choice of energy is cost, ease of use, and emotions. Notice that glaringly absent from this list is science. Energy choices have long since left science out of the equation.
Of course, it is. You ask how I can write a column about this. What we don't realize is how rapidly and how important energy has become to modern societies. The following is a column I wrote for my hometown newspaper about six months ago. While not about energy, it describes a real scenario, that while current, could have easily been widespread conditions about 70 years ago in the United States. The boiler, an important object in this piece, was manufactured only about sixty years ago.
On the Nip Impressions calendar, May is energy trends month. There is hardly a timelier topic, except perhaps food trends, but Nip Impressions does not cover food and my doctor wants me to lose ten pounds, so I try not to think about it. I would guess a good half of the headlines in the popular press today are about energy. These then fall into two categories, security of supply and what to do about, what I will call "dirty" energy.
I was doing some consulting in a mill a number of years ago that had a sign by their entrance that stated they had won some "safety award of the year" some years before the time I visited. I chided them and asked what they had been doing since the time of the award? Obviously, they had not won it again. Unfortunately, about five years after my visit, they had a triple fatality at that mill--contractors on an outage. There are a couple of issues I would like to unpack from my opening paragraph.
Many of us take OTC (Over The Counter) drugs. These can be abused, too. Especially on outages. I'll tell a story on myself...
There was a fatal automobile accident in our neighborhood lately that can serve as an excellent study on how we think when there is little time to sort out the situation. There are lessons here for all of us.
I like to remind people of the following resource any time I get a chance. It is a good way to start off safety month here at Paperitalo Publications. It is simply this. On our website, PaperMoney (www.globalpapermoney.com), we have been keeping track of the industry's safety performance. In its sixth year now, the department, "Reported Risks" is a current chronicle of "Risks: Fires, Fatalities and Catastrophes." It is a good learning resource and a source of endless safety meeting subjects.
It has been over a decade ago that I started talking about manufacturing your own spare parts with additive manufacturing. It is now moving from an interesting idea to a vital necessity. Between logistics problems and world turmoil, the spare parts needed for your machine may not be available. Most, except those of the most critical metallurgy, you can make in your own shop with less skills than a first-class welder or machinist.
Over the years, I have talked about this miserable old mill that I worked at long ago. When I was young, when I had a choice, I always ran towards opportunities that had lots of problems. My philosophy was that situations in trouble were the best way to advance your career. I have never been interested in career safety, it is boring and leads to complacency. So, I end up at this mill, in the prime of my career. It is large, ancient and a mess...
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