7/11/07 - BOOM!

You folks know how I always mention that the details are what makes the difference between good and great performance. Well, sometimes it makes the difference between disaster and great performance too.

I had a friend who was a newly graduated mechanical engineer at a manufacturing facility. He was an excited and motivated person with a lot of good ideas. Like many of us at that stage of our careers, he was keen to make a name for himself as a solid team member.

One day, my friend (let's call him Spanky) was asked to design a system for unloading bulk chemicals in liquid form from railroad cars. One of the chemicals in question was really nasty stuff, and the idea was to make the unloading process safer. The new system would require no user intervention, and was sealed from leaks very carefully.

The design stage was completed without a hitch, and the job went into construction. Again, no problems were encountered, and the system was finished one morning just in time to unload a railroad car over the lunch hour. So far, so good.

You might imagine the excitement for both Spanky and the operators in the area. They happily hooked up the hose to the underbelly of the railroad car, opened the outlet valve on the tanker and started the unloading pump. Beautiful! So, Spanky went to his office for lunch, and the operator sat down at his desk to eat a sandwich while the railroad car was unloaded.

After some time passed, there was a thunderous BOOM!!!, followed by a lot of noises best left unrepeated. The operator ran out to the train shed to find a terrible sight. The unloading system had unloaded ALL of the chemicals, and then the little unloading pump merrily pulled a complete vacuum on the tank. There was no vacuum breaker on the system, so naturally, the pressure of the atmosphere around the tank crushed it as flat as a beer can on the interstate! Impressive, but not a happy sight, I can tell you.

$150,000 in damage was inflicted on the railroad car in a few seconds, rendering it useless. All of this damage occurred because a vacuum breaker was not included in the system design, and the operator forgot to open the top hatch of the tank before unloading the car.

Small details matter!

Does your maintenance program consider the "small details" like job plans, a well managed CMMS, proper work scheduling, training and a work flow process? No?

BOOM!!!

Can We Offer You Some Help?