Professional Articles 

Secrets of my success 

In 2023 one of my ex-colleague asked me to share the secrets of my success. After scratching my head, I came up with the following, based on my experiences as a first line engineer to Head of Engineering and also on inspired by my experience as an Industrial Engineer.

Not being afraid to question what doesn't make sense 

Recurring problems which cause only a minor impact

After identifying such problems I used to endlessly analyze them to arrive at their root causes, find solutions, implement those solutions, educate the people at all levels and make sure such problems won't arise after I moved out of that department. 

Major failures

Breakdowns and accidents that never occurred for many years after commissioning the plant and then from a certain point,  occurring at periodic intervals causing huge losses.

Apparent design deficiencies

Correcting design deficiencies based on repetitive failures and correcting them across all such equipment. 

Open discussion

As the Engineering head I organized first-of-its-kind meetings involving people from all the departments to discuss the major setbacks like Turbogenerator tripping that led to stoppage of production in several parts of the plant. The meetings were in my small room attended by employees and supervisors of the affected shift who had first information of the incident, section managers and  heads of  the departments. All the departments - mechanical, electrical and instrumentation departments  were present  in these meetings. The room became hot and sweaty as there was only a window air conditioner for about 15 people. 

On the day of my post-retirement farewell dinner some young engineers told me that because of those meetings they realized the complexity and interdependence of all the sub systems  and respective departments. 

One key feature of these meetings was no blaming, finger pointing and personality clashes. I listed out on the white board behind my desk, the observations, likely causes, tentative remedial actions and finally allotting the responsibility for implementing the identified actions to individuals by name and likely date. 

First hand observations

To get reliable information about targeted problems,  I  observed what was happening in minute detail.  I used to spend many extra hours on this R&D work without which they would not have been resolved on a permanent basis. 

The oxygen shortage case study (to be completed)

Industrial Engineering philosophy requires questioning the current method 

- is this the best method? 

- is there a better way of doing this element of the task in less time, cost, effort etc. 

When the production and consumption figures were reliably worked out, the leakages were found to be huge. Replacing the defective valves dramatically improved the line pressure. 

Somehow I had a gut feeling that the whole process of converting the rejected steel ingots (about 3 feet in dia and 10 feet in length) seemed very primitive. The blasting pit worked only in night shifts as their oxygen consumption was high and risk of explosions. The process was 

- load them on internal wagons using the overhead crane and haul the wagons to the blasting area. 

- Unload them at the blasting area by a huge mobile crane dedicated to this purpose

- make 3/4 holes in them using small dia steel pipes and pure oxygen

- load one ingot at a time into the underground pit after putting explosive in the holes and attaching wires to ignite 

- covering the pit with 12 inch thick steel slab

- blasting

 - loading the smaller pieces on wagons 

- pulling the wagons back to the raw material bay of the steel foundry 

So, I went to the company library, looked for the likely shelf and picked up a couple of likely books. One book I picked up was a handbook on gas cutting (probably). When I browsed that book I found a chapter on heavy cutting showing a special oxy-acetylene torch made by a British firm, not an oxygen lance. There was a photo showing a huge steel ingot being sliced through using a special torch! 

The book explained that effective heavy cutting requires (1) high velocity (2) high quantity of oxygen. By using a special nozzle, very high velocity was achieved at pressure as low as 1.5 kg/cm sq or so against the line pressure 10kg. So high pressure was not required for cutting huge steel ingots!  

I submitted a report suggesting importing the special torches and laying a dedicated oxygen line from the oxygen plant to the steel foundry to ensure high flow rate without affecting the other consumers. It was accepted and the torches were ordered. 

Unfortunately when I was close to leaving HEC I came to know that the torches consignment was lost at the port! I don't know what happened later on.