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It is always management's fault, for by the very definition management is in charge. So whether your facility succeeds or fails, makes the best profit in its history, or is handing out notices that it is closing, it is management's fault.

Now, sometimes management gets lucky and fate showers it with an undeserved blessing and sometimes management is blind and doesn't see impending disaster, but either way, management will get the credit or the blame.

Two mills in which I have worked have been shuttered. The latest one is the mill at Wickliffe, Kentucky. The other one, now only a vacant lot, was in Rittman, Ohio. One could see the end coming for both of them long ago.

Rittman was considered a goner when I got there in 1985. It was the butt of jokes within the company. The long time employees on site had no clue it was in such a desperate condition and was facing closure. I was part of a management team that came in as a last gasp effort to save it. In fact, it would have already been closed or sold before I arrived had it not represented such a great liability and heavy hit to the bottom line to do so. It was more economical to run than to take the hit. (Question for you--is your mill in this condition today but you and your management team are not up to facing reality?) Fortunately, I got to watch from a ringside seat while an absolutely brilliant manager turned it around (I'll not mention his name, but he will be the keynote speaker at the Light Green Machine Institute Conference in October. You might want to sign up to hear him here). What happened at Rittman allowed an undeserving mill to stay open and highly profitable for another fifteen years. I learned a tremendous amount from my ringside seat at this turnaround.

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Wickliffe was another story. Rumors had it that an executive of the company that built the Wickliffe mill was flying over the area one time, perhaps in the sixties, perhaps earlier, and looking down at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, said, "This would be a great place to build a paper mill." Confirmed or not, it makes a great story. Started up in 1970, Wickliffe has reached the age of forty-five years and is being retired. One could say that this mill stayed in business this long despite its management. It is surprising that it outlasted a mill which started at nearly the same time and made similar grades--Courtland, Alabama, which International Paper closed several years ago.

Rittman was doomed because of poor management decisions dating back to at least the 1950s. These decisions involved labor, investment and long term planning. After all, the primary grades at Rittman, coated recycled cartonboard, are still in use, Rittman was just too far gone to attract the investment necessary to make it one of the survivors.

Wickliffe, if management had been extraordinarily prescient, probably never should have been built. The technology that ultimately doomed Wickliffe (and Courtland) predated the groundbreaking ceremony for these two mills--Arpanet it was called. It was the precursor to the Internet and was developed in the sixties. However, management can hardly be blamed for not seeing fifty years into the future, but they can be blamed for another decision made in the late 1980s at this site. In the late 1980s, it was decided to add an off-machine coater at Wickliffe. Good idea up to a point--make value added grades. However, the coater was placed in a position where it would line up with a second machine (if it was ever built). Still not a bad decision. But now comes the really bad decision--the width of that coater was set to be the width of the existing machine, already a narrow, obsolete width. This was the killer--and doomed this mill twenty-five years ago. It made the second machine at this mill, a machine desperately needed to properly balance the energy and pulp capacity on this site, impossible to build.

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The grades made at Rittman and Wickliffe (and Courtland) are still being consumed to this day. However, they are being manufactured in mills with better efficiencies and cost structures than these now-shuttered facilities. In shrinking markets, the places where these mills participated, management decisions caught up with them.

So, for you smug managers of tissue and packaging grade mills, mills in grades that are stable to expanding, I have a question for you--what management mistakes are your favorable markets hiding in your mills? And as a follow on, what is going on today that could be a prescient hint as to the future of your mill twenty to thirty years out?

That manager at Rittman had an oft repeated statement which I have never forgotten. It is this: "From the day your mill opens, it is going out of business. The question is when and how. As managers, our job is to extend that life as long as it makes investment sense."

For our quiz this week, we'll ask your opinion about the status of your mill. You may take it here.

For safety this week, regardless of your mill's status and especially if your mill is on hard times, never, ever forget to operate in a safe manner.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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