I was diligent in what I did, benefitting me with an enduring image where a doorway framed a prior boss clutching his head between his hands, with anguished face, as he cried out "Bring back Richard Smith - all is forgiven!!!". That diligence kept me in the job, as I wobbled in adapting to and taking on in-entirety my new world.
I grasped to my heart the wish to make their world of straight-forward world-wise truisms my world. It made a lot more sense than the "enlightened" world I was turning my back on (personal note)
I was fortunate to get in, with high unemployment in the area at the time. My interpretation is the forceful Managing Director took a shine to me coming in with my buzzing enthusiasm and I got that chance which I ran with.
Hadfields as I experienced it was a working environment out-of-line
with all the silted-up bogged-down goalless working world of a
declining economy I was to subsequently experience.
Hadfields had been like the other famous Sheffield steel companies in
making the complete high-end steels portfolio of castings, forgings,
rolled alloy steels and special steels.
Bought in a state of ruin with only a rolled steels operation
surviving by "Tiny" Rowland and his "Lonrho" group, he installed tough
local steelmaker "Mad Jack" Woodhouse with absolute control.
The powerful adjectives categorising "Tiny" Rowland's business
approach identically describe "Mad Jack" Woodhouse, I suggest. From
very different social backgrounds, my perception is that regarding
business they were naturally matching and in close agreement.
(Historical note: a British company would generally have a Board with
money-people suppressing leadership from the technical core of the
Company)
He had to massively disrupt established comfortable ways of working to
give any chance of making a viable manufacturing operation.
The effort succeeded...
The Company turned a profit selling steel to its customers despite
competing against subsidised nationalised producers.
The value of convenience and specific requirements met made the nett
cost to the customer lower even though the per-tonne price exposed the
full unsubsidised manufacturing cost
(explanation).
Meanwhile, the people I worked with were the 1-in-10 to 1-in-20
survivors of the massive round of redundancies as industries
collapsed.
They were very self-aware of the indulgent fantasy of the non-work in
the previous decade, the 1970's.
The person at the reconvening meeting exercising their exemption from
obligation to deliver their portion of the plan (sic.) was no
ally of the 15 others who had done their parts towards the launch of
the new way things would be done. To keep jobs, everyone knew there
had to be one improving change after another, in quick succession,
iterating around ever tightening performance. With no spare time or
energy to recover the plan where anyone did not deliver. All the
"with exemption" (sic.) persons chose to part ways with the
Company. In the context of a high unemployment rate afflicting the
economy...
Change is never easy to accept and one example of forcing the pace is
described. It was identifying that ingots must be quickly transferred
hot from the melting-shop to the rolling-mill for immediate charge to
the gas-fired furnaces heating the ingots to rolling temperature (the
"soaking pits" in steelworks terminology). The Director contracted-in
a demolition team who over a weekend completely demolished the
reheating furnace which took ingots from ambient temperature to the
low-red temperature for charging into the "soaking pits". Come
Monday, it was simply not there any more.
Vacating a route for an adapted very large forklift truck to transfer
the red-hot ingots.
The argument that any error in timing would cause the ingots to crack
on placing in the "soaking pits" is always persuasive, so all ingots
would have been put through the reheating furnace if it still existed.
This absolute intervention, enforcing that the new method was the only
method, forced the change immediately. A new production cooperation
linking the melting-shop and rolling-mill in a tightly-linked flowing
sequential production process made the new arrangement work. The
rapid through-flow furthered that vital "selling point", reliable
quick delivery. All this was foreseen? I am sure it was, considering
this with the benefit of 35 years of industrial work experience.
That was an early intervention by the new leadership, with the side-effect of establishing its authority and purpose. Subsequent interventions were the team efforts.
I mentioned the "truisms" which would define my new world.
They share a deceptive simplicity, but whose attainment requires clear
purpose.
Examples:
So I defined who I was as I embarked on my career.
Our training programme took us around the support functions of the steelworks, so that we could be incidentally introduced to venturing out onto the Works shop-floor supervised on specific missions.
So we did the sales team and department, the quality assurance department, the metallurgical laboratories, the non-destructive testing department, ...
There's a lot of good things there. Of these, an early "magic" was preparing and inspecting samples in the metallurgical laboratory .
The works was far from modern. For example, then in the early 1980's,
the rolling-mill was from the 1920's. The rolling stands, the
gearboxes, the heavy electrical equipment driving the rolls ("Ilgner
sets") where all from the 1920's.
The overall appearance of the Hadfield
rolling mill
.
Many of the steel grades were resulfurized (UK-English : resulphurised) for machinability, so the steel refinement in the melting shop only needed an oxidising slag stage . Another reason for a break with the past - discontinue what had become minority product lines for the company but which would have forced the same cost on all products if the capability were maintained, and concentrate on a coherent category of products the company excelled in.
The
overall appearance of the steelworks
is seen in another webpage.
This world included the internal-organs-shaking noise of the
electric-arc furnace getting under-way, the intense heat radiation
while "tapping" (pouring the steel out of) the furnace, the clattering
of the bar mill - all environments in which survival required knowing
when it was time to run - fast! For those who have never worked
inside the industrial world, I wish I could convey it, but that is
more than anyone could possibly do.
Like most jobs, there was a base rhythym.
The "Quality office" was the main daily steady job.
Set in the middle of the steelworks, it collated production
information, enabling at this one source an accurate overview of the
state of production in the entire steelworks.
The steelworks used paper "dockets" accompanying each job to inform
each department through which flowed the batch of steel what job it
was. From which could be identified what needed doing to it - what
were the requirements.
By noting the dockets at each production stage (eg the
"soaking-pit" pulpit, the rolling-mill office, etc) at frequent
intervals, we produced a single ever-progressing table which gave
at-a-glance a very good diagnosis of the flow of production.
The starting production unit was a "cast" of steel. Given the arc
furnace is always operated to full capacity (nothing else is feasible
or economic). In this case around 80 tonnes of steel. Preceding
optimisation of scrap going into the most economical melt is of course
vital. However... Upon melting and refining the enduring properties
of the steel as experienced by the customer are formed; making the
"cast" the crucial identifier for quality assurance.
Therefore; this table growing forward in time tracked the fate of each
cast as it flowed through the factory through to dispatch to customer.
Perusing this table was similar to, in medical anology, checking the
pulse of a patient - an overall indicator of wellness of the current
situation.
We the junior staff could see anomolies and obtain explanations at the
time, so we could make notes. Which I would now categorise as
enabling it to be seen whether something departing below optimum was a
random untoward variable (eg a breakdown) about which not much
could be done or a systematic variable which needed action.
A formative early experience was being pressured to make the quality office production chart ever more complete and up-to-date to within very few hours of the production. This was capped by departments contacting the quality office saying they did not feel comfortable with me intercepting and taking away dockets for recording while production was still ongoing in their department. Given any mishap would leave them with unidentified material; an obvious unacceptable risk. The compromise I implemented which pleased all was to note the largest orders entering each department and enter them on the production table, but to formally capture all information later "in the normal way".
All of us in the quality function supporting production had a "shift"
shop-floor quality control operator role we could "cover", by reason
of being trained and mentored into that job. On exigencies like
holidays and illness taking away a quality control technician (one is
needed for each shift, normally meaning three are required to cover a
24-hour period), a person from the daytime quality office could switch
to working a production shift in that area.
My "shift cover" role was the bar mill quality control operator.
Staff shortage always made the night shift the most difficult to
person and that was what you would have to cover. Which meant no
support in place: no-one to call; no assistance available. On the
night shift from 10pm to 6am, there is no overlap at any time with the
office day staff. You were there on your own in representing the
quality function in the production department. Sometimes for one
night; sometimes for days and up to a couple of weeks. The quality
system had you "releasing" each product batch to proceed onwards; so
you had an absolute ability to squeeze the production department.
Getting conformance to requirements while keeping the production
flowing was of course a more artful exercise in communicating with the
production personnel around you. The barmill QC job had recording
like the reheating furnace temperature. There were measurements like
bar size, using a micrometer. Then there were tests like "upsetting"
samples - you had the shear operator crop a "short" say 50mm long, put
it in a small dedicated furnace at yellow heat then squeeze it in a
dedicated hydraulic press lengthways to make it bulge around its girth
and reveal intruding "lap" defects if present.
The shift QC cover role introduced me to what became a vital familiar
feature in manufacturing: it is necessary to possess an absolute
authority to halt production to force those you oversee to fulfil to
your wishes, but to never exercise that authority in operating by
cooperation in getting products flowing through right first time.
All very worthy stuff I have described...
As previously mentioned, I was credited with diligent systematic work.
The other side of my personality is a fizzing enthusiasm.
I effervesced with ideas on forms of continuous caster to replace the
ingot casting which persisted at this plant. Doing quite organised
investigation of what was being offered by iron-and-steel-plant
engineering companies.
Then I sketched-out ideas for more elegant ways of extracting the
steel ingots from the cast-iron moulds while transferring them to the
rolling mill in the process; looking to optimise what is while also
having an interest in what must supercede it.
I did things which amused but clearly worked.
I so often got off my chair to file dockets in the filing cabinets
after recording information that I formed and attached a front weight
out of an offcut of about 60mm square solid steel. So that I could
"flick" the chair backwards with the back of my lower legs to get up
without the chair falling over backwards. They played-up in jest by
strapping a huge weight of scrap steel under my chair, forcing me into
it as I returned to the office, lifted it and me into the recess in my
desk and left me unable to move - to their great amusement.
A job I recurrently did was cold-stamp identities on every billet for
some customers who required it - typically after full-grinding, which
with many-kW machines could leave a quite hard surface on alloy steel
billets. Hence, as anyone would do (?!), I found a discarded
sledgehammer head, took it to the maintenance workshop and had a thick
stocky handle fitted. So that, as I went along a line of billets, the
hammer and punch hopped along in a rhythm of rebounding jumps. When
others were rostered to do the stamping, they were with pretend
earnestness proffered my sledgehammer, taken from its place beside my
desk, with words of "You must have this".
Simply follow me on details and build your own picture of what I am saying here...
Everyone wore a fireproof wool-rich jacket with no external pockets - standard for steelworks and foundry. No external pockets so splashes of liquid metal can't fall in and burn you anyway. Most avoided artificial fibre clothing. Wool is very fireproof, neither melting nor burning. Cotton will burn but doesn't melt, and when burning can be quite readily patted-out. Polymer artificial fibre clothing burns as a bubbling "toffee" which sticks to the skin, and the burning isn't easy to stop - not good.
Walking past the huge gas-fired furnaces like the ones for bringing
ingots to rolling temperature, I only had to learn once that you
breath in quite deeply before you go into that zone, then breath
shallowly on top of that and hold your breath if you suspect there are
stray jets of hot gas. You must train yourself not to gasp in pain if
burned. And to resume breathing only when you feel the overall
temperature is manageable in the areas you travel on into, continuing
to walk about your business.
Natural-gas (methane) flames are almost transparent, and leakage from
furnaces - jets of hot gas - are fairly much invisible. There's so
much heat-haze around, the heat-haze from one jet can't be noticed.
Especially in the narrow walkways between the various steelworks
plant.
You got so accustomed to holding your breath and pinching your eyes
nearly shut to protect your eyes, continuing walking-on straight to
your destination that you had no surprise when the side of your jacket
was brown with seared fibres.
You could lose significant parts of an eyebrow, burned away.
I even once had my eyelashes a bit melted together.
I did notice that some visitors I conducted around were completely
intimidated by the environment.
The melting shop and especially its ingot casting area "benefitted"
from a lot of steel spray. Molten steel spilled preferentially breaks
into a fine spray, the steel burning in air and remaining a high
yellow hot.
You learn to, in one quick simultaneous action, dip your head forward
so your helmet peak shields you face, straighten-up to pull the
creases out of your clothes so burning steel spray cannot dwell
anywhere and do more than bounce off you, you clasp your jacket closed
around you, and where the situation is bad get your hands get refuge
under each opposite armpit as you clasp your jacket shut around you.
Best stay still until the spray stops. Movement would open gaps in
your clothing the steel spray could get through. On the raised
staging of the ingot pouring area a mishap had the steel spray go on
for so long that, looking downwards in shielded my face, through the
steel grating I was observing wooden pallets and various sacks of
materials on the ground below catching fire. Subjecting me to rising
heat and smoke which would have forced to move if the ladle valve had
not finally shut.
Risk?
Don't let luridness mislead.
"Monster" hazards like the huge flow of white-hot metal tapped out of the arc-furnace into the ladle are actually fairly negligible risks because they are so totally obvious and the extreme things like the ferocious heat radiation from the white-hot stream drives-back anyone from getting too close.
This is the real deal. If every eventuality which could hurt you is
very improbable, but there are a lot of them, then there is a real
probability that you could be involved in a mishap. So you are always
minimising risks in lots of ways which no procedurality could
describe.
You accumulate occasions when, but for something you did to avoid a
low but identifiable risk, you would have been in the wrong place at
the wrong time where something went wrong.
For example : I was left contemplating my would-have-been fate in the
barmill on surveying tens of metres of red-hot bar wrapped
back-and-forth around a footbridge over the rolling track where I had
speeded-up to be over it and gone before a bar I could see approaching
in the distance passed under it. No noted risk, but this time that
bar reared-up in a "hockey-stick end" coming out of the adjacent
rolling stand, catching and wrapping around the overbridge. It cost
me nothing to minimise that minimal risk, and that's what you do...
These thought processes always run in your mind, evaluating your
surrounding and its potential risks - the factor of the consequence of
a conjectured event happening and the probability it could happen.
Risk control is a mix of having been mentored into a working
environment and this perpetual running active process of evaluating
risks.
The big things are what concerns you. When the subject evaluates to you as minor, you doubt an outsider truly holds dear to their heart your realistic well-being.
Teamwork... If you do not do your part of the job properly, someone
else could get hurt or killed.
You do your job concientously or you will get pushed out of the
working environment.
It's a discipline which makes you a type of person, working in
manufacturing and construction environments.
Getting to the point - the serious mishaps which did occur in my time in the steelworks were "unexpected" events in lower-risk / minimal hazard areas. These happen at similar frequency in "safe" environments (noting when writing the Grenfell Tower fire in London, as an example).
I learned to act now and apologise later if necessary.
Preamble - on entering a mill building or crossing between bays you
look where the overhead cranes are. Their lifting and moving
activities present the greatest hazard, generally. Technical context
- in a workshop or mill building, cranes high up near the roof run
along each bay supported on extra-strength roof beams, with lifting
wires and hook hanging into the work-space below.
Assigned to look after new-starting trainees because of, well,
whatever is recognised about me which makes that so, we were walking,
about to cross from the rolling-mill bay to the billet-cooling-bank
bay. With a heat-shielding wall with occasional person-sized arches
between. Checking, I saw the wheels-end of a crane approaching where
the arch is which we would pass through, and checking again, I saw the
lifting mechanism was in-sight therefore near the wall, implying a
load was near the wall. With the odds stacking up too much, in this
noisy area and a couple of seconds to go, I clubbed my fists together
and swung them hard into his chest to knock him to a stop. His eyes
shot out on stalks. A yellow-hot load swung by past the arch,
close-in, which we would have walked straight into. Winded, bent-over
and struggling to breath, he volunteered with grateful expression a
clear emphatic thumbs-ups, indicating he was happy and good with what
had just happened.
My world in which I lived.
These are snapshots from this world, which I hope are evocative and
persist in likeness in the working world I follow.
Unemployment was high, industrial collapse was a huge social problem - and some rules got bent. Coming back up North to Sheffield from Birmingham, closing in on the "M1", a thin orange column of dusty haze rising to a height visible from several miles away indicated all was well in the steelworks. What that looked like from within the melting-shop is indescribable. Perhaps search on-line for historical videos? The technology existed to suppress the dust, but everyone was hanging-in by their finger-ends and the exigency of keeping what employment there was resulted in a more flexible approach...
The bustle and energy of the industrial world of the British Midlands of my childhood and youth I was not to see again until I worked in Turkey in 2015.
(R. Smith, 13Dec2017, 26Dec2017, 29Dec2017, 10Feb2018)
