PaulAllen on Nostr: The west has lost so many manufacturing jobs over the years, it may be that we don't ...
The west has lost so many manufacturing jobs over the years, it may be that we don't understand curtailment quite as well as our parents and grandparents did.
Curtailment is when a manufacturing facility is forced to shut down production equipment for an extended period of time due to decreased demand for the product.
I don't know how applicable this is to the power-generation industry but having lived through curtailments of mulit-million-dollar equipment, I can tell you that it's a major pain in the ass for everyone: vendors, customers, employees and shareholders.
The human element is that curtailment results in unreliable paychecks for hourly employees with an ever-increasing cost of living. Salary employees may not have to deal with fluctuating paychecks, but repeated curtailments spook them to the point that the smart ones end up taking their skills elsewhere rather than wait for an unannounced meeting with HR.
Blue collar wrench-turners don't mind a few extra days off during Christmas, Independence Day or hunting season but give them enough unpaid leave and eventually they stop coming back.
You've now lost experienced engineers, mechanics and machine operators. Guys who in many cases know better than the OEM how to bring the equipment back to life and which knobs to tweak to make it safely spit out the desired product. And because you spent the last two decades cutting costs under the guise of embracing "LeAn MaNuFaCtUrInG", experienced employees were either too busy to transfer their knowledge to the new guys or said new guys didn't stick around long enough to absorb it.
Because nobody knows how to fire up the machine like Ol' Fred did, customers end up dealing with either inferior product or shipping delays.
Also, often unbeknownst to the desk jockeys in the front office, the maintenance team - desperate to meet uptime quotas for the machines that still have steady orders - have been scavenging parts from the curtailed equipment to keep other machines running. Now when the plant director gets approval to restart the asset, he's hit with a quarter-million-dollar parts order list before the thing can be put back into production. Oh, and there's a 12-week lead time on the parts.
Death spiral much?
Oh no, Norway town 🇳🇴 FAFO the hard way, as they kick out a #Bitcoin miner and now that the energy producer doesn't have that base load demand coming in they had to jack up prices
Who would have thought that mayors don't know how markets work? Who could have predicted this?
https://www.nrk.no/nordland/datasenter-la-ned-driften-_-na-far-innbyggerne-sjokkregning-1.17042643
Published at
2024-09-15 10:56:04Event JSON
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"content": "The west has lost so many manufacturing jobs over the years, it may be that we don't understand curtailment quite as well as our parents and grandparents did.\n\nCurtailment is when a manufacturing facility is forced to shut down production equipment for an extended period of time due to decreased demand for the product.\n\nI don't know how applicable this is to the power-generation industry but having lived through curtailments of mulit-million-dollar equipment, I can tell you that it's a major pain in the ass for everyone: vendors, customers, employees and shareholders.\n\nThe human element is that curtailment results in unreliable paychecks for hourly employees with an ever-increasing cost of living. Salary employees may not have to deal with fluctuating paychecks, but repeated curtailments spook them to the point that the smart ones end up taking their skills elsewhere rather than wait for an unannounced meeting with HR.\n\nBlue collar wrench-turners don't mind a few extra days off during Christmas, Independence Day or hunting season but give them enough unpaid leave and eventually they stop coming back.\n\nYou've now lost experienced engineers, mechanics and machine operators. Guys who in many cases know better than the OEM how to bring the equipment back to life and which knobs to tweak to make it safely spit out the desired product. And because you spent the last two decades cutting costs under the guise of embracing \"LeAn MaNuFaCtUrInG\", experienced employees were either too busy to transfer their knowledge to the new guys or said new guys didn't stick around long enough to absorb it.\n\nBecause nobody knows how to fire up the machine like Ol' Fred did, customers end up dealing with either inferior product or shipping delays.\n\nAlso, often unbeknownst to the desk jockeys in the front office, the maintenance team - desperate to meet uptime quotas for the machines that still have steady orders - have been scavenging parts from the curtailed equipment to keep other machines running. Now when the plant director gets approval to restart the asset, he's hit with a quarter-million-dollar parts order list before the thing can be put back into production. Oh, and there's a 12-week lead time on the parts.\n\nDeath spiral much?\n\nnostr:note1mg5dq9ctwf59r2stlaa2nwm3djehxewcwtn04e0r3d9zam36xgjs9gswe6 ",
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