I have known a few plant production managers at several facilities in my career and they seem to share particular attributes. No doubt they fall into a particular Myers-Briggs type. I can say without a doubt that I am personally disqualified from such activity because I tend to be more of the absentminded professor type. It takes a certain breed of cat to manage any kind of production facility. Indeed, your average construction site superintendant is probably better suited to manage a chemical plant than is a chemist.
Well, OK. That was a bit harsh. Many chemists could do it if they had to. But if you owned a chemical company and were looking for a new plant manager, you’d probably find that the pool of candidates didn’t include many chemists. There, that is more polite. Chemists are often tweakers by nature and a chemical plant is not a place for experiments. Plant managers live by the production schedule. They are both masters of and slaves to this schedule. Their whole careers are about the coordination of material flows- the arrival of raw materials, processing, and the logistics of shipping.
A chemical plant is a big machine through which flows a large stream of money. Money flows in one side of this machine and out the other side. Jets of cash flow outward to payroll and raw material vendors. The production manager never forgets that the inflowing stream must always be bigger than the outflowing stream. Customers insist on just-in-time delivery of products, but they also want 60 days net with a lot of other strings. The relationship between the controller and the plant manager may be chronically strained.
People who run production plants are really engineers, irrespective of whether or not they hold a diploma in engineering. Scientists find the thread between cause and effect. Engineers take that thread and figure out how to use it for fun and profit. Sure, some scientists have engineering sense and some engineers have scientific sense. But a plant manager is all about running the plant at full speed. When they make tweaks, it is usually on the engineering side. Usually they are loath to alter chemistry.
In the Navy they have a saying- Fight the Ship. Use every part of the boat to your advantage. Slap ’em with the rudder if it comes to that. A good production manager is crafty, thrifty, and when needed, a brutal task master. He knows his crew and can and will push them to the edge when needed.
A really smart plant manager will find and keep the best maintenance people he/she can find. In fact, a savvy plant manager will always vote to throw a chemist overboard rather than let a maintenance person go. One of the least acknowledged groups at a chemical plant is the maintenance crew. To keep the plant up and running you need the skill sets of plumbers, welders, pipefitters, machinists, electricians, iron workers, carpenters, tinners, and a bunch of general handymen and gofers. Usually you hire people with multiple skill sets.
The best plant managers are steely-eyed SOB’s who speak softly and command respect and maybe a little fear. A plant manager must be able to work effectively with arrogant executives, stubborn accountants, egghead scientists, angry admin staff, defensive production people, and sly construction contractors. The people skills are as important as the technical skills.
If I were going to hire people for key management positions in a plant, I would hire people from the nuclear Navy. As a group, they have already been screened for many attributes useful to a chemical plant. They tend to be high achievers, have good quantitative skills, have been highly trained for work in hazardous environments, and they understand the importance of following protocol.
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April 19, 2007 at 6:32 pm
bill
Why so hard on chemists? Yes, personality can play a role in career choice, but I know plenty of well organized, nasty chemists…
Could it be chemists just don’t choose to be managers?
Come to think of it – managing does seem to me to look rather like choosing for dinner something already chewed and swallowed instead of a fresh new entry.
April 19, 2007 at 9:06 pm
gaussling
Hi Bill, I suppose it does look like I’m speaking in a negative way about chemists. My purpose in blogging is to find a way to express what I’m feeling about the things I see. If my content seems to be already chewed and swallowed, then I suppose I should start managing better. \;-)
April 20, 2007 at 7:02 am
John Spevacek
I’d modify your concerns to “research” chemists, (or research engineers/physicist/…) and the term “research” isn’t confined to just the staff with the word “research” somewhere in their job title. Anybody who ever wants to tweek any system just to see what happens, or maybe just because they are bored, would fit the term “researcher” in this case…and would be the last candidate for a production manager or any other production job. I know I could never do that. I’ve always got to be trying something new. Other personalities however, are perfect for that job, and consequently they make lousy researchers. That’s o.k., there’s a need for all types.
April 20, 2007 at 7:21 am
gaussling
Hi John, I’ll accept your modification . Fair point. What I am increasingly struck with as I grow older is the need for all types people in our business. I used to suffer from the conceit that as a chemist I could do anything in this business. Boy was I wrong. I appreciate the need for not only people with different skills, but the need for the stresses that come from different viewpoints. A healthy mix of people in an organization provides checks and balances in decision making. Ideas and decisions often need a sniff test from people who are not married to the problem.
April 21, 2007 at 9:47 pm
zaki
This post that you published really caught my interest. I’m currently a process engineer/production executive whom run a plant with capacity of 3000 MT/day. It’s a very big and fast plant. I’m pleased and feel being appreciated with the good words you mention towards people who run production plant.At least there are people out there who understand and know something about what the production/process engineers are doing. Yes, we have are master and slaves of the schedule. That’s part of our job to coordinate in synchronize everything in production plant.
But I totally agree with gaussling that we need all types of people in the industry. I need chemist and their people to take care of the quality of oil that i produced from plant. I need the operation people to handle the oil logistic etc. I need the shipping people to import and export the oils….I need the accountant to handle the costing of our utilities and production etc…I need maintenance people to support and back up our machine/instruments etc during problematic hours….Bottom neck, we need all kind of support from various types of profesionals….
Really like this post.,…keep it up
With reference to John comments, if you say so, everybody is a researcher regardless of his/her position/title. Accountant, laywers, judge, salesperson, scientist will definitely do research on their jobs scope or outside their job scope. However, why there is a job title : researcher??
I was a former research assistant and research officer…I know all about the job.
July 22, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Duckie
I’ve worked in plants like this blogger describes where quality control and chemist are red-headed step children to the operation. The leadership by example takes over and decisions are made before lab results are requested and by the time the results are returned the request for the test was meaningless. The mentality goes a step further in that any ‘chemist’ that would work here is already an idiot because he/she actually stays and can not get a better job.
What the blogger didn’t mention is that any good plant manager knows when to ignore the chemists and when to blame them as well. So kiddies throw out your test tube set and learn to be a demanding butthole if you expect to succeed.
July 22, 2008 at 3:58 pm
gaussling
Hi Duckie, At some point you have to shoot the chemist and get on with the process. The important thing is not to shoot them too soon.
July 22, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Duckie
I think you are confusing lab rats with egg heads.
July 22, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Duckie
The best thing is when the Plant Manager and one of his cronies is in the lab doing there own test. Then you know something is screwed up and too far removed from following procedures to even get an explanation.
A good plant manager will do his own tinkering in reality. The results will go into his own little black book and create a sense of job security. In many commodity type industries this is common practice and never conveyed into written procedures.