Good day,
My name is Dirk Philip and I manage a small company on the island of Trinidad & Tobago called
Accurate Industrial Supplied Ltd.
The company was started by my father in 1970 and I joined him in 1995 and with his help, until 2005 using the same customer base, I started promoting Sealing Products.
My background is Technical, trained in Auto and Diesel mechanics. I work on cars for a while and also spent close to three years as a Mechanical Technician on an oil exploration jack-up rig.
Finance Governs Engineering.
This is an opinion I have that I’ve been wanting to share.
In doing sales over the years we have always tried to find good quality products that can make a difference to our customers’ equipment. When we do, we get out there with something good to share with our customers and in the end, our customers are satisfied. But change does not come easy.
The difficulties we face
The young engineer who just left school and has a degree in design engineering but zero experience in application engineering, when he is put into a position of maintenance, the only experience he can draw from is his OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and he assumes they would put the best components in their equipment. Unfortunately, what he’s not aware of, is someone will design a process and then someone will engineer the process and they reach out to vendors E.g. Pumps, valves, and exchangers. All these vendors are now competing to sell their components into these projects to be competitive. Unless specified by the design engineer, they are not going to use top-quality products. Instead, they will use products that will perform a little longer than their warranty period until they can collect their retainer. After that, unless you want to buy a new component, the OEM normally is not extremely interested in improving old equipment.
Changes are not covered by insurance.
With this in mind, to be able to make a change in design, to be able to increase the reliability of the equipment, and reduce downtime on the plant, engineers are required to do MOC (Management of Change documents). This is a very onerous document that will kill any enthusiasm for making changes.
While I see the need for recording changes, some of the MOC’s I have seen could be as much as 200 to 300 pages of justification and explanation. Makes you want to work for 8 hrs. and go home.
The insurance companies will take any opportunity not to pay a claim and any change(s) made must be approved by the OEM. The OEM is not interested because they are not getting anything out of it anymore. So you go to work every day do the same thing over and over with a total lack of interest in making any changes.
My Best Advice
You spent 6 years in university and you are most intimate with your equipment and processes.
Have faith in yourself and do what you think makes sense. If you’re already in a bad situation what do you have to lose?! Any change may be an improvement and you will always have something to learn.
Try it!
