As a young engineer, I joined a PSF maker , who prided itself that all work would be done by executive/ managers themselves and they would not employ any assistants or staff or junior level staff. The executives were given a little higher salary , but practically, the whole plant was running on contractual agreement. From Senior Managers to Operators, everyone was on a contract, renewable after 1 year.
Well in a chemical or a process Industry, the manual job is anyway very small and basically it is about managing a control panel and rarely turning a valve on or off. So, it was not a big deal about assistants or no assistants on the floor. However, what turned out eventually was that most executives and managers, who were supposed to be doing job of engineers and managers were now behaving like a skilled operator.
Therefore, if a Spinning or Draw Line manager could put a pack or fight against the crimper and keep breaking his head against broken filament lines, then he was a better operator then others. However, no one ever tried to use his brains to see, if he could stop the frequent breakdowns.
Once the pack heater would heat the packs to 280deg, yet all the safety pins would break on spinning machine. This went on for 10 days, but since everyone is designed to be an operator, they all would replace the pack with another one and ask maintenance to check the issue. Till one day, I found that there was a fan on the top of the pack heater that did not run and discovered that the fan belt had broken. Result was that though the packs were still heating to the temperature, but the convection heating was not inside the core. The fan belt was changed and things became normal. This is how most spinning or fibre line was run. Faults would repeat, but no one waited and tried to find the reason as they were all designed as super operators.
The worst case, was that the Textile Section was given over to a Manager, who had zero experience in Textile and had come from Carbon Black. He simply ruined the place. First, if you don't have the experience, then you don't adventure into it at a senior position and that too for a start up plant, which has to make a position in the market. Now, this man , because of his zero experience, but high arrogance, went into ruin the whole project.
One would see day and night the failure of fibre line, but inexperience was ruining the place and no one had the solutions. The cutter blades would fail prematurely, the fibre length was not consistent. The tenacity was not uniform, the frequent crimper break down also meant that the drawing was intermittent and hence denier variation was part and parcel of the product. The whole quality had been screwed up.
His mismanagement kept the morale of the whole team low, the quality suffered and after 6 months, the company was sitting on tons and tons of material, which could not be sold.
It is only one single Bad Apple, who had brought an investment of multi million dollar to a halt and losses piling up by the day. Yet interestingly the top management did not find a problem with this joker, but tried to run the plant further under his stewardship.
The contractual system made many a good managers leave the company, the inexperienced or those who could not find a job elsewhere continued. The stress on the managers were so high that one of my colleagues, who later got promoted as a manager lost his life to a heart attack.
The company virtually became BIFR case and got sold later to a large Polyester producer in India.
This man was later transferred to another carbon black plant and he did well for himself there. Only if the top management would have kept the right people and not misadventure d into this contractual system of management, perhaps, it would have done better. Industrial Marketing is another big weakness with commodity fibres and yarns.
Barbad-e-Gulistan karne ko bas ek hi Uli Kafi Tah. ( Only one Bad Apple was Enough to rot the full plant )
Well in a chemical or a process Industry, the manual job is anyway very small and basically it is about managing a control panel and rarely turning a valve on or off. So, it was not a big deal about assistants or no assistants on the floor. However, what turned out eventually was that most executives and managers, who were supposed to be doing job of engineers and managers were now behaving like a skilled operator.
Therefore, if a Spinning or Draw Line manager could put a pack or fight against the crimper and keep breaking his head against broken filament lines, then he was a better operator then others. However, no one ever tried to use his brains to see, if he could stop the frequent breakdowns.
Once the pack heater would heat the packs to 280deg, yet all the safety pins would break on spinning machine. This went on for 10 days, but since everyone is designed to be an operator, they all would replace the pack with another one and ask maintenance to check the issue. Till one day, I found that there was a fan on the top of the pack heater that did not run and discovered that the fan belt had broken. Result was that though the packs were still heating to the temperature, but the convection heating was not inside the core. The fan belt was changed and things became normal. This is how most spinning or fibre line was run. Faults would repeat, but no one waited and tried to find the reason as they were all designed as super operators.
The worst case, was that the Textile Section was given over to a Manager, who had zero experience in Textile and had come from Carbon Black. He simply ruined the place. First, if you don't have the experience, then you don't adventure into it at a senior position and that too for a start up plant, which has to make a position in the market. Now, this man , because of his zero experience, but high arrogance, went into ruin the whole project.
One would see day and night the failure of fibre line, but inexperience was ruining the place and no one had the solutions. The cutter blades would fail prematurely, the fibre length was not consistent. The tenacity was not uniform, the frequent crimper break down also meant that the drawing was intermittent and hence denier variation was part and parcel of the product. The whole quality had been screwed up.
His mismanagement kept the morale of the whole team low, the quality suffered and after 6 months, the company was sitting on tons and tons of material, which could not be sold.
It is only one single Bad Apple, who had brought an investment of multi million dollar to a halt and losses piling up by the day. Yet interestingly the top management did not find a problem with this joker, but tried to run the plant further under his stewardship.
The contractual system made many a good managers leave the company, the inexperienced or those who could not find a job elsewhere continued. The stress on the managers were so high that one of my colleagues, who later got promoted as a manager lost his life to a heart attack.
The company virtually became BIFR case and got sold later to a large Polyester producer in India.
This man was later transferred to another carbon black plant and he did well for himself there. Only if the top management would have kept the right people and not misadventure d into this contractual system of management, perhaps, it would have done better. Industrial Marketing is another big weakness with commodity fibres and yarns.
Barbad-e-Gulistan karne ko bas ek hi Uli Kafi Tah. ( Only one Bad Apple was Enough to rot the full plant )
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