National Clothesline
Small things can cause big problems
The most peculiar things can cause poor production. How about a steam hose?
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The problem was that my supplier didn’t have the correct diameter hose in stock. I needed a ¾-inch (if I remember correctly), an unusual size, but all that was available was
½-inch. That was good enough, I thought. After all, it certainly remedied the
immediate problem; putting this hose on stopped the leak dead in its tracks.
Then came a quality problem and a sail down the river named Denial. The hose in
question was the return steam hose on the rear steam chest — the one that pressed the back of the shirt. The backs of the shirts were not
drying completely. The steam chest had a cold spot on it. I hammered the steam
trap, threw in a couple of cuss words, nothing helped.
It took what seemed like forever to arrive at the obvious cause. I eventually
said to myself, “Hey Don, don’t you think that the machine’s designer used a ¾-inch hose for a reason?”
It happens to be a fact that ¾-inch hose is two and a half times larger than ½-inch hose. I wasn't thinking of that at the time that I attached the ½-inch hose. I probably didn't know that fact then, anyway. Fixing the leak was
my only thought.
The hose was probably longer than 12 inches and much smaller than the engineers
had intended it to be. If ½-inch would have worked, ½-inch would be what they would have prescribed.
By installing the smaller hose, I was literally choking the steam flow through
the machine. The condensed steam could never be removed from the machine fast
enough.
To this day, I can't believe that it took me more than a second to figure that
out! So we had to increase the dry time. That didn't work so well. The touch-up
person had to dry every shirt on a hot head. Production slowed to significantly
lesser rate so that she could keep up, sort of. What a costly mistake that was!
Fast-forward about 17 years.
I had put this entire episode deep within the archives of my memory bank until
one day in Colorado. I was working in a drycleaning plant and there were issues
with productivity in the drycleaning department.
A certain sub-par level of production had become the norm and it needed to be
addressed. We began measuring the pieces pressed per hour and found serious
deficiencies; one particular press station was significantly poorer than the
others.
The presser had a most interesting defense. He was operating a utility press. He
called me over to his press and activated the lever that opens the steam to the
head.
I have never seen anything like this. It took four or five seconds for steam to
flow out of the head! And even after waiting that time, the steam flow was very
weak. I have never seen this before or since.
The reason? Well, you can probably guess, given the first part of this column.
Sometime earlier, the steam hose from the main manifold to the top steam head
had been replaced with the incorrect part.
I suspect that the hose had, like mine years earlier, sprung a leak. In its
place was a 48-inch all-steam iron hose! This hose had, indeed, caused the
steam flow to choke like the 2004 Yankees!
I never dared to ask how long that had been like that for fear of truly
embarrassing someone. This, to me, demonstrated a lack of monitoring
productivity, to say the least.
So, the lesson du jour is that all equipment is designed to perform a certain
way, but don’t expect the same results if you alter the original design.
Whenever you are evaluating the productivity or the quality from any machine, be
certain that you start out with factory specs for parts, padding, adjustments
and operation.
“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got!
