Do you listen to your motors complaining about overload? Do you see your pump packings crying a flood? Do you hear you bearings whine about contaminated lubricants? Do you notice your steam system that coughs excessive condensate and it’s complains about strained elbows?
There are two types of people in mills. There are people who notice when equipment show signs of distress, and people who don’t. We often call people who don’t see the signs of distress in equipment for “mill blind” people. The mill blindness may not be intentional, but rather a product of being so used to the environment that poor equipment condition just isn’t noticed. Let us supply you with a small informal “mil blindness test for you.
Below are a few examples of “mill blindness” we often see in pulp and paper mills. Most of you have at some point seen these equipment problems before, but ask yourself, are we accepting these conditions or are the problems corrected in our mill?