Commonality among Indifference: Working on me

Well, I have surrounded myself with work. Work, work, and more work. So much so that I totally forgot a huge meeting I was supposed to "hold". Yea, my meeting that I was to lead. I really feel like crap for that! I guess volunteering will have to be put on hold, or at least on the back burner for awhile.

Our shop is filled to the rim. I have things on top of things. We are farming out (subcontracting) work to other local shops just to save floor space.

I've seen it like this before in my 9 years (or 10, or 8, I forget, all I know is I get extra vacation now days), it's almost expected. My shop designs and builds for other, very large companies, witch in turn, sell the "entire package" to yet another, even larger company. Basically, a very large company (the same one as of late) builds a very large piece of machinery for a very 'refined' purpose. We build the supporting systems to go along with the package. Although these parts that WE design and make are dwarfed by the parent machine, Wide Load signs are still common to ship these lesser units. I guess one good side of this chain is that I get to "see and hear" the inside of all the crap going on now days in this country. The bad side is that I cannot tell anyone about it. Well, at least not in a public setting. It's starting to hit the news in pieces now days anyway.

Now the latest challenge. Although my position is more managerial than production, all vertical mounted reservoirs are designed and built my little old me. I'm not good, I am experienced.

When you buy a piece of 24", 36" or 48" pipe cut to length, a mistake is costly. Now add in the pipe being 316L Stainless Steel. With China overfeed the U.S. on Billion dollar shipments of.....OOPS.... (I forgot, I can't talk about it). But wait, it gets better. This sucker is 8 feet taller than our hoist can pick, 4 feet taller than the bridge our hoist rides on, and 3 feet taller than any rented crane (boom truck) can pick within our roof. Our production manager has taken on the job of designing a lifting apparatuses that may allow us to make the pipe erect within our limitations. I have not even looked at his plans, let along even tried to work out the details.

And this is the reason why I must finish this post. I must go back in tomorrow to work the math on this. Of course, his is not coming in. Thanks John!!!! All I know is this......