Unforgivable actions

[David2011]

Our system was called MUSCLE. It was developed in-house and kept track of all phases of maintenance.

It automatically ordered parts when the order point was met. It notified the supervisors when a maintenance routine was coming up. It notified the parts people what parts would be needed for the upcoming routine. It scheduled trained technicians to be working when the routine should be completed

It kept track of man hours against every machine. It kept track of overtime, and a lot more.

The downside was that it was a mainframe program written in COBOL. When the mainframe was replaced with pc’s we had to make a choice of rewriting the program or going to another. We didn’t have any programmers left that knew COBOL so they went with SAP. A terrible mistake in my opinion.

Hope this doesn’t get me in trouble here. I worked for the first company to buy into all of SAP’s modules. I heard someone say it was Germany’s plot to get even for WWII.

 

[projectnut]

I believe SAP stands for Send Another Payment. As for revenge for WWII I believe it. The cost for the initial version for our company was around $11,000,000.00. When the second version came out it wasn't compatible with the first. It was like starting all over again.

Rather than use the standard identification procedures like the International Bearing Interchange Guide each facility had to come up with their own ID number. The program wouldn't accept numbers already used by another plant within the system. That made life extremely difficult. With the previous system anyone could look through the 34 plants in our system and see if someone else had the part they needed. With the SAP system that didn't work.

 

[hotrats]

The Brewing Co. I worked for was corporate owned. When the corporate bigwigs would come for a visit/inspection, the storeroom would undergo a massive cleanup/organize. I was not in the storeroom, but was told of the multitude of things thrown into dumpsters for hauling away. Sometimes, I'd walk out to the dumpsters to take a look - it was amazing - new electric motors the size of washing machines. I also understand the company hauling this stuff off may have made some money reselling it. Gradually, all these items would be repurchased, and restocked.
Then the "5S" fever took hold. The returnable bottle line at the time wasn't in continuous use due to demand. The machinery was over 30 years old. Many parts for the bottle washer unavailable. Mechanics on the line had made replacement parts, and stocked cabinets on the line. With "5S" you know what happened to those - to the dumpster. And that was effectively the end of the bottle washer and returnable bottle line.
I worked in brewing during this time. Mechanics made made cleaning tools for me, for cleaning tank outlets and other places that normal items couldn't reach. "5S" saw those tools thrown away, me complaining, and being told that it needed to be standard tools, heck, even the calender on the wall was trashed.
I must say, at this I lost all desire to actually any more than needed to draw a paycheck. Later, due to the purchase of Miller Brewing Co. by SAB, a LLC with MolsonCoors, and eventual buyout of SAB by InBev, the brewery was closed and I was jobless

 

[pdentrem]

Any kind of system that causes all the special tools and skills to be tossed is in my opinion a company destroyer. Many places do not recover from this attitude of lean inventory as the cost to operate just jumped.
Pierre