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I think the answer to the title question would have been "certainly" a couple of years ago. It does not seem to be so solid now. And, of course, it depends on what types of electric vehicles we are talking about. Electric fork or clamp trucks seem to be a certainty. Over the road vehicles (automobiles, trucks) may need a qualifier based on use.
The last phase in our capital project is ramp up. We already covered this for tissue last week. Ramp up is never over. Don't put an end date on it.
Last week, we talked about planning. I am just moving on down the schedule this week to "Check Out and Commissioning." The potential for screwups here is as great as in planning. Bring in a fresh OCD person to manage these functions.
It helps to have OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) in order to plan a capital project, even a small one. Or as the joke says, OCD should be CDO, so the words are in the correct alphabetical order. I can tell you this--if you don't have a touch of OCD, you will never be a successful capital project manager.
This week, I want to talk about buying equipment and services. The first thing I want to talk about is keeping your relationship with the sellers at arm's length.
The answer likely lies with a definition of your role in the company. If you are a typical project engineer within a mill, it likely starts when you are given a request from an operating department. Listen carefully to them, they are your customer. Yet bring your own professionalism to the party, too. This means don't listen to them wide eyed and gap jawed as if they have all the answers.
By Fos, the Rat: Well, I can't believe it, but another month of Pulp Rats is almost over. It has seemed extra short this year, perhaps because there are only four columns, not five as there are some years. I would like to wrap up talking about Force Majeure.
By Fos, the Rat: Jim was telling me a story I could hardly believe. Let's have him tell it this week. Take it away, Jim.
By Fos, the Rat: I thought this week I would walk out on the Annual Pulp Rat Convention floor and talk to some who are not being heard by the Great Council.
By Fos, the Rat: Once again, I am interviewing Mr. Jim at the Pulp Rats' Convention. This year the convention is being held in the deep south.
It starts when you get out of bed in the morning. Do you make your bed or not? Depends on your personal standards. Likewise, how you keep your work area, how you keep your automobile, whether you steal from others or lie, whether you put tools back where you found them or in a better place, these are your standards. So don't say there are no standards--you started having standards before you went to school.
We've talked about policy and regulations for three weeks, let's finish out the month with two columns on standards. Standards are so ubiquitous; we don't even notice them.
There are many regulations we encounter in our work life that are good. There are others that seem to be a power kick for the regulators. Here is one I would have us adopt a papermakers if I were King.
The last week of June this year may be the most important week in regulations and general policy in the last century.
If you have not heard of EUDR by now, surely others in your company have. This is the European Commission Regulation on Deforestation-free products. Subtitle: EU rules to guarantee that the products EU citizens consume do not contribute to deforestation or forest degradation worldwide. The operative word here is "worldwide." Thus, no matter where you make your forest products, if you want to sell it in the EU, you must comply.
Quick--what is your image of your purchasing team? I'll bet it is them sitting in their offices with their nose stuck in a computer or a document. Or perhaps on the phone. Back in the days when I worked in a mill, I spent a good deal of time wandering around the mill. It didn't make any difference what my job was, I wandered around the mill in order to understand it from a detailed and overarching perspective. This made me better at my job, whether it be engineering, maintenance, technical, power house manager, whatever.
Forty years ago, I was up to my eyeballs in a major rebuild of the paper machine where I worked. One day, a couple of months before the actual commencement of the shutdown for the rebuild, I got a call in my office. It was a truck driver that was in the administration building. He had walked there from where he left his truck, about two miles down the road (no cell phones in those days). I went out to see what I could do for him. He took me to his truck. It was barely off the two-lane highway. One set of the trailer's rear axle tires were gone, and the wheel hubs were worn down to the axle. We are talking about two axles.
These days it often takes a deep dive to understand honest and ethical, the first two attributes I mentioned last week. When it comes to honesty, you can't be selective. You are either honest or you are not--throughout all aspects of your life. Hence, purchasing managers, especially, need to be honest throughout all aspects of their life.
This is simple and in this order...
Over fifty years ago, when I first entered the pulp and paper industry, the first energy crisis was underway. As a young person early in my career, I and others in my peer group thought this was new, exciting and solvable. Fifty years later, it is old, boring and never ending. So, let's end this month's energy trends' columns with three truths.
Worldwide, the overall energy policy in place is derived from ideas one hundred years or more old. For the last century, all we have been doing is putting band aides on this, leaving us with a mishmash of regulations that do nothing to make a consistent, effective policy. We will just focus on highway transportation here and ponder a bit how a sane policy in this corner of the energy world would have a profound impact on energy usage everywhere, even inside our mills.
When I was a teenager on the farm in southern Ohio, the electric line came across the pasture to our home. It was about 1/3 of a mile from our house to the road where the main electric line was and is. I have an aerial shot of our homestead hanging in my office which was taken about 1970. In it, one can clearly see the electric pole near our house with the bright gray, almost white, transformer near its top. Let me tell you about this transformer...
"The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power" by Daniel Yergin is the definitive book on the history of oil up until the current energy craziness we have been experiencing for the last fifteen years or so. It is also a great documentary available for free on YouTube. I highly recommend the documentary. Unfortunately, "The Prize" stops where modern energy follies start.
This is exactly the same column I delivered up to you for the last week in March. At that time, I was talking about housekeeping and how it relates to maintenance. Housekeeping is strongly tied into safety, too. Read it again, please. This is the column I promised you last week. Your reaction will be either scoffing at it or believing it--there will be no middle of the road reactions. If you decide to believe, contact me and I will help you, at no charge, to get started.
The US and European pulp and paper industries are in the throes of two distinct and separate mergers (or takeovers, if you prefer). One is being driven from Europe, the other from the United States. Despite noble efforts from the respective executive suites some employees will be upset. This has happened in similar situations before.
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