In 1984, I was reporting to an enlightened Reliability Manager at a leading multinational petrochemical corporation. At some point, he asked for a briefing on equipment-reliability issues at one of our plants. As I explained, projects at several of our sites were based on price-book data that listed the least-expensive pump, baseplate, and equipment-installation procedure, among other items and activities. 

I was then asked what the incremental cost for machines might be for them to be labeled “above average anticipated reliability.” I probably gave a ballpark answer of 5% to 7% and took the opportunity to opine that spending 70 minutes to do a job being shoe-horned into 60 minutes would seem to make good sense.

The manager instructed me to walk down the hall and tell the company’s project engineers to increase the prices listed in the corporate cost-estimating manuals. Per his direction, by the next day, those manuals were to only reflect costs for reliable equipment.

The company then let it be known that its project managers would likely be staying with their projects through the startup phase—and for at least 12 months after successfully turning out on-spec product, at the predefined throughput rate, for five consecutive days. It was clear that project managers who had wanted to impress by coming in under budget by aiming for feed-in two days before the publicized date were involved in a gamble that could equate to a boring career away from where they soon hoped to be.

Years later, I realize that the training methods of many companies include neither good books nor mandatory reading. Time and again, I've been told "there's no budget for books," although I know, for example, that significant payback from changing the mechanical-seal-flush-fluid application in just four of a plant's hundred process pumps from API Flush Plan 32 to Flush Plan 53A is clearly described on page so-and-so of a book that costs $40. As I have suggested in past columns, articles, and presentations, the return from investing in good, job-related, technical reading material for personnel in today's plants (and expecting it to be read) can't be overstated.

Alas, deliberately remaining uninformed is one’s constitutional right, and there's no way to change that attitude. Motivation is hard to come by nowadays. Nevertheless, a change in both flush plans and attitudes could (perhaps) save a company enough money each year to double its retirement fund. But, I concede, it will likely be much easier not to stir up that hornet’s nest.

heinzpbloch@gmail.com

(Editor's Note: Click Here for A List of Heinz Bloch's Books)