Jim,

You are right on track about these individuals that wreak havoc on the industry. The sad part is that they are in all industries around the globe. To me it seems that they start out as a lower manager that moves into a good facility and makes a reputation by driving down costs at the expense of long term viability. This is almost always possible for a short time, but then he/she is off to bigger and better facilities to drive them into disarray. The problems they leave are more than just at that site. They force upper management, (they know very little about the business and as it seems most are now accountants and lawyers), who can only see the short term dollars, to institute these bad plans to all the other sites. Hence one bad apple can literally spoil the barrel.

The really clever ones get away clean before their handiwork is evident with the company treasury in their suitcase.

I moved on because I could not stomach what they were doing to the company that I devoted a long career to. I adhere to my belief that I will not advise anyone to do something that I would not do if I owned the facility.

Michael E. Higgins
St. Petersburg, Florida, USA

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Couldn't agree with you more – I saw this 20 years ago when I was up in Canada. Our company got a new President who had worked for companies X, Y & Z as a vice president it was touted. I thought – and those companies are in AWFUL shape, how the heck did we go about hiring this guy.

Even worse was promoting within. We had a manager who went from Woodlands to Pulp mill (manager) to Papermill (manager) to Vice President to President. I met him at the pulp mill. He slashed maintenance budgets & slashed inventories in stores (mind you we were in New Brunswick Canada where everything you can buy industrial stuff off the shelf like many pulp & paper towns – right), he got promoted to paper mill manager within 3 years. His buddy followed him as pulp mill manager, just when the deck of cards starting to come apart – he ended up being fired, the place had been "wonderful" when the previous manager left. The guy who was promoted to President was also very petty and demeaning of employees (I never suffered from this), vendors saw him doing this while I was there – I thought what the heck are they thinking when he pulled some of his antics.

The worst thing about that story is that management in that mill would look at his rise and think "this is what you do to get ahead in this company?!?!?!" Talk about discouragement. On a positive note the provincial gov't just gave a 40 million dollar secured loan to the company. It was a wonderful place to work in the late 80s.

[Name withheld by request]

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Now there's a subject for you!
Yes, you are getting grumpy! So am I and for good cause. Our world is falling down around our ears and nobody has the guts or brains to do much about it.
"Nekoosa Bond" is now going to be made in Hamilton, OH, by a company named "Smart!!"
NewPage is closing Niagara ahead of schedule...

[Name withheld by request]

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Been enjoying your articles, especially the one on Morning meetings. Lots of time wasted.

At one mill were I worked, the mill manager conducted the morning meeting and he went around the table for reports form each manager, saftey first, If two parties started a side conversation, he would halt the meeting and ask them if they wanted to join his meeting or take theirs outside as they were interrupting the others. He also would sometimes ask a manager a question about what someone else said. Needless to say, when the meeting was over, each manager had heard and understood what the others talked about.

As for the 'experts' in the industry, you are right on about checking their qualifications. I had the experience of hiring a "training" expert and all he did was take our literature and held classes, at our expense, and went over what we already had, claiming he had written it. Nothing new or inovative about his approach.

Further, we had a supplier supply us an "expert" on recovery boilers to monitor our system and he spent about 3 hours going over the boiler, talking with employees and came in with a 4 page report of things we needed to do to improve the operation. Most were so far off the wall, we wondered where he had been all his career, certainly not around a recovery boiler.

Mind you, there are some good guys out there, but some dimwits.

Tommy Surles
Panama City, Florida, USA

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Hello Jim,

I am one of your subscribers of Nip Impressions where I read about the scorecard. I would like a copy of this if at all possible. Thank-you for Nip Impressions and all the info that is shared. Much appreciated.

Regards,

Sean Sherrard
Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

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Sean,

I think we mentioned what you need to do to get this FREE material from Richard Reese. Go to www.cellulosecommunity.org and sign up as a member (also free). Then contact Mr. Reese from there. Thanks for your interest, and thanks to Mr. Reese for making this material available.

Jim

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