Email Jim at jim.thompson@ipulpmedia.com

If you have read me for any length of time, you know I despise the maintenance budget slashers. They have this idea that if the cut the maintenance budget, profit will rise and so will their bonuses. Ask them if they miss the scheduled maintenance schedule on their BMWs.

If they have a heart and common sense, there may be a better way to convince them that appropriate maintenance expenditures are desired and lead to more profits.

How?

Operate well-maintained but older equipment in your department. I was located in the engineering department in a mill many decades ago. Our department had the oldest pickup truck in the mill--nearly ten years. This is a mill that had about forty pickup trucks. The woodyard's fleet was the youngest--their pickup trucks had a half-life of about six months, I kid you not. Pushing pickup trucks out of the mud with a front-end loader is hard on them. You could easily tell the pickup trucks that belonged to them--the tail gate was torn off and the bed was scrunched up to the rear axle.

I met a school teacher in Kansas last summer who, earlier in life, had been deployed to Iraq. Growing up on a farm, she knew how to take care of equipment. When she got to her duty station, she noticed they we regularly procuring new forklifts. Why? When the air cleaners got filled with sand, the took them off and then ran them until the engine wore out. She had a fit and enough rank to fix the problem.

When I was a young boy, my dad would bring his work home with him and we would hear about it at the dinner table. He ran a manufacturing department at a well-known industrial equipment company. The theme of his soliloquies was often the same--other departments were getting new equipment and his was not. As an adult I figured out this was a compliment--he was maintaining and operating his "old" equipment while this was something his peers didn't do or were incapable of doing.

Many times, it seems macho to buy new equipment when the appropriate action is to maintain the equipment you have. I am not talking about equipment that is inefficient or obsolete compared to new equipment. Antiques equipment is not a fair comparison. However, used but maintained equipment is perfectly acceptable.

In the pulp, paper, and converting industries it seems to me that privately held companies do a better job of maintaining their equipment than do publicly held companies. There is an attitude of caring and preserving that comes from the top. However, you can do it in your department, no matter the ownership structure, if you take well thought out reasonable approach.

By the way, when it comes to old equipment, pictured below is my pride and joy, 1964 Corvair Monza. Yes, it is an antique and it is obsolete. It is worthless, except to jog the memories of this old guy. Learn what is valuable for your mill and what is merely an antique.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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