Ok so, here we are, over eleven months later. It has been quite a while and a few things have happened in that time. I figured that it was time for some kind of update. So lets start with the whole night shift thing.
Night shift has been over for some time, late February to be honest. It took way to long to get used to day shift again. I'm not entirely sure I have done so even after 8 months. I'm naturally more of a night person. However Beta Shift did its thing and we made enough progress to lead to the next problem.
So the whole reason for Beta Shift was to bake and shake several metric tons of mites, which we did. The problem as Separation 2, aka spin wash. The mite bodies get a ride in a centrifuge and then rinsed with chemicals to further clean them and then redried. And after all that we ship it off to Denmark so they can do whatever it is they do.
At the time, Sep 2 could spin wash about 4-5 batches a week, and we were drying 7. So over the course of night shift, they fell quite a bit behind. To the tune of about 30 batches. This is not good. Historically we try to only be about 3-4 behind.
So after 2 months of being that far behind a bold strategy was put into place. We were going to work really hard. This plan failed horribly and half the crew quit. So the next new strategy was put into place, voluntary overtime Fridays! This plan failed horribly because nobody volunteered for to work Fridays. Well spin wash didn't, but drying and sieving did. So they fell further behind. So we needed the boldest plan ever! We needed...
So the blitz was a going to have a special volunteer force of former production people who are working administration jobs to join in and help clear out the backlog. This... had mixed results. More batches were getting processed, about 8 a week. However this is not enough to get us out of the hole.
See while we were processing 8 in spin washing, drying and sieving was also processing 8 a week. So for the first few weeks the net gain was a big ol' goose egg. Now this started mid July, by mid August the volunteer squad started to get better and we were processing 9-10 a week. So by the time I went on vacation, more about that later, we were about 20-22 behind. So it was agreed that when the Blitz ended in mid September if we were only 15 behind we would call it a win.
So how many did we end with? Zero. That right, the team pulled it out and finished the blitz with no backlog. How you might ask? Well... it turns out that if you are used to spin washing 10 a week and only dry 4, you gain quite a bit. You see one of the drying and sieving rooms go shut down for about 4 weeks for "maintenance", so yeah it all "worked out".
So now that the planes aren't over head anymore, you would think it would be fine right? Wrong! You see the Blitz had left everyone kinda amped up and they were used to doing 8-10 a week. When it ended we slowed down to about half that. So now there was extra time to do... nothing. When nothing is happening, its bad and people get laid off. We had a few day where people were asked to used PTO because there wasn't work to be done. It wasn't great.
The latest issue is now mistakes, For some reason the amount of mistakes has skyrocketed. So more changes are on there way.
Well that is what has been going on at work. As for me, I know that updates and post will come as they may. This now mostly the annual post of what has been going on. Until next year!
