Someone in the Plant is Going to Die
(And When They do it is Your Fault)
It was just a normal workday.
I was sitting at my desk absorbed in some paperwork when I felt a presence in my office doorway.
It was the Plant Manager, Phil. He and I kind of got along, but he said some bizarre things at times. This time was no exception. He blurted out, “Someone in my plant is going to die soon. And when they do I am going to hold you accountable”.
I was struck by the fact that he knew of an imminent death to occur in the company’s, not his own personal plant. I was also struck that by me working on some paperwork I was going to be complicit in that person’s death.
On occasion I have been known to have a short fuse.
It usually happens when someone says something incredibly stupid or accuses me of something that is not true. In this case Phil checked off both boxes.
I looked up at Phil and said, “I don’t appreciate either your comment or your attitude. You can take both and leave my office now”.
I guess that brought Phil to a more sensible place. He apologized (Something rare from him indeed) and sat down at my desk so we could talk face to face.
One of the activities in the plant was to move the drums of ink used in filling our children’s markers around the warehouse and the plant.
The drums held 55 gallons of ink and were very heavy when full. The proper method was to put four drums on a pallet and then pick up the pallet with a fork lift or pallet handler and move them.
When operators became lazy and didn’t want to move a pallet, they would try to take one drum at a time. They would do this by putting the drum between the tines of the truck and pick it up. This was something I was not aware of.
This action could be dangerous, as the drums were still flexible and when squeezed between tines would tend to flex inward. In certain cases they flexed enough to cause the drum to fall through the tines and crash to the floor. If the drum was held high enough when it fell and someone was walking underneath it (A really bad practice) it could injure or kill them.
This was certainly a violation of safe material handling practices and could result in a suspension or firing of the violator.
Apparently Phil didn’t want to go that route so instead he was looking for someone else to blame for not discipling his workers. He went looking for someone, anyone who was in their office that he could blame for this and I won the prize.
Phil was looking for something foolproof to keep this from happening. Apparently he hadn’t heard the saying, “Nothing is foolproof from the sufficiently talented fool”.
As the head of equipment and tooling engineering, I agreed to find him something that could be used to more safely move single drums of ink.
We agreed to meet with all of the operators and have them become a part of the process on what to do. That turned out to be a bit of a fiasco.
None of the operators had any idea about what was available in industry for moving drums. So it was up to me to locate and identify the options and then allow the group to pick the one they liked the best.
There were two possibilities. The first was to go to metal drums instead of plastic. That got rid of the drum flexing, but it was still not a safe practice to lift them between the forklift tines. There were attachments that were used on forklifts that clamped the drum and held it securely.
The problem with this was that it was an expensive attachment and was not easy to put on the forklift and take off. So either you left it on the forklift which limited its use to drum handling or you needed time to attach and remove it when needed.
The other option was something called a parrot beak. It also attached to the forklift but could be easily put on and taken off. The beak clamped around the edge of the drum and held it securely. And the cost was reasonable at only about $1,000.
As the tooling and equipment manager, I spent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on things for the plant.
To me $1,000 was not a big deal. But to the plant people who spent no money this was a very big deal. Not one person was in favor of spending the $1,000. They asked if we could borrow one or get it as a lease to try it out.
I called the company That sold them and neither a rental or borrowing one was a possibility. So, I made an executive decision and bought one. The team and Phil were dismayed that I did this, but I am also impatient. I cannot stand dithering about decisions that are either yes or no and seem to be pretty certain to go with.
The initial use of the parrot beak worked out fine. I heard no complaints about its use.
Then one day when I was walking in the plant, I saw one of the operators moving an entire pallet of drums. I stopped and asked him what happened to the parrot beak.
Apparently one of the operators did not secure a drum lid properly. When he attached the beak and picked up the drum, the unsecured lid came off and the drum spilled all of its ink. Remember, “Nothing is foolproof from the sufficiently talented fool”.
The crew immediately blamed the beak as the problem and stopped using it. I went back to my office shaking my head. I sat and did some paperwork and this time Phil did not stop by and say, “Someone in my plant is going to die soon. And when they do I am going to hold you accountable”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter H. Christian was a founding partner and president of espi, a business consulting firm in Northeastern PA. Previously he was an Executive at Crayola Corporation. He has worked with 300+ clients in business development, profit improvement, operations, IS selection and implementation, and Project Management. He has 40+ years of experience in strategic and facility planning, CI, lean, and supply chain. He has helped companies to realize millions of dollars in cost reductions and profit improvements adding and retaining thousands of jobs. He has authored the Amazon bestselling business books, “What About the Vermin Problem?” and “Influences and Influencers” and is published in a variety of professional magazines. He is most appreciative of Dr. Rodney Ridley and Donald Schalk of the O’Pake Institute, Alvernia University for their support in allowing him to teach this important course.
