Project 5.2: Identifying a Power Plant Problem You are anindependent consultant and operate a business known as Pro-ActiveConsultants Inc. from your home. Four days ago you received atelephone call from Paullette Machon, who is vice president,operations, of Baldur Agricultural Chemicals (BAC), a company withmanufacturing plants across the country. She said she has a taskfor you and invited you to visit her at the BAC office at 1450Disraeli Crescent (of the town or city where you live). “I want youto drive over to our plant in Gordontown,” she announced, “to lookinto a technical problem in the power house.” (Gordontown is 43miles from your city, has a population of 15,700, and its primaryemployer is the BAC plant.) “I’m concerned that power house costsare rising at Gordontown just at the moment when world fertilizerprices are dropping,” Ms. Machon continues. “This is causing thecompany to be uncompetitive in both national and internationalmarkets.”

Ms. Machon explains that BAC requires a lot of hot water andsteam in its manufacturing operations. However, over the past twoyears fuel consumption at Gordontown has risen by 18%, numerousbreakdowns have occurred that have interfered with production, andthere has been a sharp rise in production costs. She has visitedthe power house repeatedly, but has never found anything that couldbe attributed to poor operation. In fact, the power house hasalways been immaculate. Now Ms. Machon wants an independentconsultant to take a look, talk to the people in the power house,and try to identify any production problems. She also hinted thatthe problem may not only be technical. “The present chief engineerat the BAC power house is Curt Hänness, and he is to retire inthree months. BAC management has to decide whether to promote HarryMarkham, the existing senior shift engineer, or to bring in a newchief engineer from outside the company. On paper, Markham is idealfor the job. He has worked in the power house for 15 years (he isnow 36) and always under Hänness, so his knowledge of the plant andits operations cannot be challenged. Yet the rising costs indicatethat all is not as it should be in the plant, and we want to besure that the new chief engineer does not perpetuate the presentconditions.” She said she would inform Hänness and Markham that shehas engaged you to study the hot water and power generating systemin their power house, and that they are to expect you. You visitthe BAC power plant in Gordtontown today. During your talks toplant staff and tours of the plant you make the following notes: 1.Housekeeping excellent—whole place shines (but is this only surfacepolish for impression of visitors?) 2. Maintenance logs areinadequately kept—need to be done more often. Need more detail.Equipment files not up to date and not properly filed. 3. Boilercleaning badly neglected. Firm instructions re boiler cleaning needto be issued by head office. 4. Flow meters are of doubtfulaccuracy. May be overreading. Not serviced for three years.Manufacturer’s service department should be contacted (these areWeston meters). Manufacturer needs to be called in to do a completecheck and then recalibrate meters. 5. Overreading of meters couldgive false flow figures—make plant seem to produce more steam thanis actually produced. 6. Good housekeeping obviously achieved byneglecting maintenance. Incorrectly placed emphasis probably causedby frequent visits from company president, who likes to bring inimportant visitors and impress them. Hänness likes reflected glory(so does Markham). 7. Shift engineers are responsible formaintenance of pumps and vacuum equipment. Not enough time givenover to this. They seem to prefer straight replacement of wholeunits on failure rather than preventive maintenance. Costly method!Obviously more breakdowns: they wait for a failure before takingaction. A preventive maintenance plan is needed. 8. Markham seemsO.K. Genial type; obviously knows his power house. Proud of it! Butseems to resist change. Definitely resents suggestions. Does helack all-round knowledge? Is he limited only to what goes on in hisplant? Is he afraid of new ideas because he doesn’t understandthem? Young staff hinted at this: too loyal to say it outright, butI felt they were restive, hampered by his insistence that they useold techniques that are known to work but are slow. Nothingconcrete was said—I just “felt” it. 9. Hänness has done a good jobtraining Markham. Made him a carbon copy. Hänness doesn’t do muchnow. Markham runs the show, and has for over a year. He expects toget the job when Hänness retires. It’ll be a real blow to him if hedoesn’t! BAC might even lose a good company man. 10. Discussedmicroprocessor-controlled CORLAND 200 power panel with staff. Youngengineers had read about it in “Plant Maintenance”—eager to haveone installed (I described the one I’d seen at Pinewood PaperMill). But Hänness and Markham knew nothing about it—didn’t seem tobe interested. Are they not keeping up-to-date with technicalmagazines?

When you return to your office you write an evaluation reportfor Ms. Machon. You can either address both the technical problemsand the personnel difficulties within the one report, or write twoseparate reports.

ACTUALLY I AM SUPPOSED TO WRITE AN EVALUATION REPORT ABOUT THIS.I REALLY NEED HELP IT IS URGENT.

THANKS IN ADVANCE.