New Hygiene Head Orders Staff to Wash Bearings

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49 replies · 8K views
Andre said:
Any panic already, Wolram?

I am not answering the phone, may be i will call them Monday.
 
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wolram said:
I am not answering the phone, may be i will call them Monday.

Treat em mean, keep them keen, eh?
 
Astronuc said:
I was going to suggest CYA and get her orders in writing. Aren't those sealed bearings?

I have heard of contamination issues from bearing lubricant ending up in production where it shouldn't be - but that was in another industry. But I imagine the lubricant one uses is compatible with food production.

They are this type Astro

http://www.bearingboys.co.uk/Bearing_Take_Up_Units-1330-c

And yes we use food safe grease.
 
Isn't it fun when someone with NO mechanical aptitude starts ordering people around? When I was the lead operator on a new paper machine, we started up the machine and couldn't get the sheet to form properly. There was a chemical retention aid that was supposed to help keep the calcium carbonate (brightness additive) and titanium dioxide (opacity additive) in the sheet with the pulp fibers, and we weren't getting any. An engineer took it upon himself to start tracing the retention aid supply line, instead of letting the coatings and additives crew do their job. He found a block valve that was closed and instead of coordinating with me (as the C&A crew would have done) so that we could get the retention aid automatic valve out of auto-demand mode and bleed in the retention aid slowly, he simply opened the valve wide open. In less than a second, the fourdriniere wire went from over 30 mph to a complete halt tearing it to pieces (over $100,000 gone!) and the top former wire was destroyed as well (over $60,000). Clean-up was very long and expensive, and replacing the wires even with an orderly shutdown could take nearly an entire shift. These "wires" were actually once woven from bronze wire, but ours were woven from fine extruded plastic fibers. Oops!
 
Wow $160,000 that's half way to buying one of our machines.
 
wolram said:
Wow $160,000 that's half way to buying one of our machines.
And that's just the cost of the two fabrics. We lost nearly a whole day's production, paid two full crews for the duration of the shutdown (about 30 people), many of whom were on forced overtime making time-and-a-half wages, etc, etc. We had to dump many thousands of gallons of pulp slurry because it was contaminated with plastic filaments from the torn forming wires - it was a huge mess. As an engineer, he was not authorized to touch any of the equipment, but he ignored the work rules and cost the company well over a quarter-million dollars in damages and lost production.
 
Do you know what ended up happening to the engineer?
 
Poop-Loops said:
Do you know what ended up happening to the engineer?
Nothing. At the very least, I would have suspended him for a couple of weeks with no pay, but they did nothing to him, despite the fact that he violated union work rules and disregarded proper procedures, to boot.
 
He probably had to sleep with the boss's ugly daughter to make up for it, though.
 
Poop-Loops said:
He probably had to sleep with the boss's ugly daughter to make up for it, though.
It would have been a step up from the harpy he was married to.
 
so it's monday.. i'd like to see what happened to this situation.
 
It's Monday here; England is 2 1/2 years behind.
 
makethings said:
so it's monday.. i'd like to see what happened to this situation.

The machine ground to a halt Sunday afternoon, it seems the bearing cage went first and got itself tangled in the ball bearings, they only lost 1.5 hrs production, it also seems there were a lot of emails flying around Monday.
 
Dear me. Have they found out already what caused the problem?
 
Andre said:
Dear me. Have they found out already what caused the problem?

LOL.
 
wolram said:
The machine ground to a halt Sunday afternoon, it seems the bearing cage went first and got itself tangled in the ball bearings, they only lost 1.5 hrs production, it also seems there were a lot of emails flying around Monday.

Andre said:
Dear me. Have they found out already what caused the problem?

:smile: Imagine how convenient it must have been for that delivery to show up Monday morning with precisely the parts that had just broken. Good ol' Woolie is going to have a reputation for being clairvoyant! :biggrin:
 
It's endemic, Woolie! My wife works for a world-class shoe manufacturer, and a few weeks ago her boss was walking around looking for neatness in the workplace. My wife had spied some material that another production team over-cut, and knowing that she would have use for that material during the next production run, she salvaged the material and stowed it in the storage shelves near her work-station. Her boss saw the materials, and she told my wife to dispose of them. What an idiot! If you work for a company that needs manufactured "raw" materials to produce their products, you don't throw away surplus materials to make the work-space "neater" and stab your employers in the neck. Dumb!
 
Every time we have an EFISIS visit loads of stuff gets chucked out, there is nothing wrong with it, it just looks untidy, we even had to clear our stash of (bits that may be handy one day) without them it is very expensive to knock up a gizmo from fresh parts.