Hello Family and Friends:
This may be a short letter because not much happened. There were some breakthroughs at work which will be big by the time all the results are in. I wish I could take credit for them but I can’t. There were some changes made that started about a month ago. One piece of equipment wasn’t performing well and so another type of equipment was installed that was manufactured by a different company. I wasn’t too crazy when I saw it gong in because it had not been engineered it was just an old piece of equipment that was available and the maintenance people though it would work better so they installed it. It took about two weeks for it to be tested and it worked pretty well, so another one was installed and then this week two more were installed for a total of four. The upshot of the change is that production through that area of the plant has been increased by 50% at least. And like I said that is big because that area is one of the bottlenecks in the process. With that improvement, production will come much closer to meeting targets and consumption factors will also improve dramatically. Fuel oil and electricity are two of the biggest expenses in the process and the harder and more consistent you can run the process the cheaper each ton becomes.
There is going to be a board meeting here from the 15 – 17 of June. The guy that asked me to come here is on the board and has asked to have a special meeting to talk to those folks involved with making the improvements in the plant. He is going to spend the day touring the plant and then have dinner to recognize those who have contributed. So my job for the next few days will be to prepare for the board meeting and try to assign names to the improvements. It will be a real motivating day for those who have contributed. Many of them are hourly employees who have probably never met a CEO. So the exposure for them should be quite an experience. I have told the employees here that you can bring in “herds” of engineers and improvements may happen. But if you have interested operators that are watching the process every day and get them interested and involved positive things will happen. No one understands the process better than they do. So after the meeting I would think involvement will be tremendous. The problem may be to prioritize all the suggestions.
When I was asked to come here and work to improve the plant operations’ that’s exactly what had to happen. I know processing and can direct the workforce in where they need to go but the specifics of the process has to come from those who run the plant on a day to day basis. My main contribution is to create an environment where people don’t come to accept poor performance, in themselves or the plant. And there have been a few times where my patience has been tried and the group has been asked to raise expectations for themselves. They have to strive to become a word class soda ash operation.
And speaking of raising expectations, this week begins the process of reducing census. I am involving all the managers but there are so many people here it is just crazy. No one does anything, everyone has someone else who does their work. That needs to change. By comparison, in Green River, every employee at the plant is responsible for producing 5,800 tons of soda ash/year (2.6 million tonsper year /total # of employees). In Magadi every employee is responsible for producing 800 tons. A long way from word class production. So we’ll see how the process goes. There are going to be some unhappy people but better a few people leave vs. the entire plant shuts down because it is uncompetitive.
In church today I distributed the home teaching lists and asked the brethren to begin calling their families. Communication here is s difficult. The home teaching lists is going to have to be updated every week as phone numbers are received and as families are moved in and out of the area. Today, there were a number of elders in Priesthood that were not even on the list who can home teach. Records here are a disaster. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to reorganize the home teaching because they asked me to talk in Sacrament meeting next Sunday on home teaching. Hopefully I can inspire the branch to get involved and reach out to those in the branch. Here a phone call counts as a home teaching visit, so the percentages better be good if that’s all it takes. The RS president has also been asked to speak on visiting teaching. With the goal to dividing the branch this summer visiting and home teaching better be good.
Well as usual I’ve rambled enough. I miss you all and hope you are doing well.
Love Paul/dad
No comments:
Post a Comment