Help at the Helm

July/August 1989

Top managers involved in steering their businesses toward success can get stuck at the helm, with little opportunity to walk through their facilities. If you have the sinking feeling that you're slipping too far from the daily management of plant personnel and equipment, the forms and advice in this article can help you regain control.

By Peter L. Kramer

Peter L. Kramer is president of Kramer Scrap, Inc., Greenfield, Massachusetts, and chairman of the Processing and Equipment Committee of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.

The scrap business is about many things. Often we get all caught up in the environmental, regulatory, and political aspects, and we let operations and marketing fend for themselves or leave them in the capable hands of middle managers and assistants. Top managers cannot be in the plant all day every day. In fact, most days we're tied to our desks and phones and barely get the opportunity to take a walk through the plant. However, we still need to know whether the plant equipment and personnel are being employed at maximum efficiency. "Tons in, tons processed, and tons out" governs our profitability--perhaps more than all other factors combined. We need to know what materials are being processed and ensure operations are in sync with marketing.

For instance, if the market decision is to hold copper and sell aluminum, you would want to confirm that it is aluminum that is being processed and made ready for shipment and that copper is being set aside in unfinished inventory. You may want to confirm that every day, but you need special tools if you are unable to look yourself.

Form 1 accomplishes two things. First, it shows you which industrial accounts are active and what materials they are sending in. Second, it gives the foremen a way to detail what grades are being processed and what equipment is being used.

If your business includes a major processing operation, such as a shear or shredder, you need to know what days the operation runs, how many hours it runs, and how many tons it produces. If it is down, you need to know why, for how long, and what is being done about it.

Form 2 provides this information: planned production and actual production, remarks, raw materials used and their source, and an hour-by-hour status of the day's activities--all provide a quick overview for top managers' consideration without presence on-site or attendance at lengthy meetings.

Form 3 is a less complex form that accomplishes the same purpose. This form can be useful in managing part-time or special-purpose operations.

When evaluating the production efficiencies of various divisions or of operations that occur simultaneously during the day, it is crucial to accurately account for the time your rolling stock devotes to each operation. A loader, for example, can be working at the baler one minute and at the shear the next. Without an accurate way to apportion that loader's time, you will not know the actual production cost for any single operation. Form 4 provides a method to account for the time rolling equipment spends at each division or operation. This form (which can be adapted from a loader to a crane) can be routed past your desk, but ultimately it should wind up in the cost accounting department.

None of these forms is intended to include everything you need to know. Their purpose is to create for you a steady and reliable flow of information to help you follow up on your specific concerns.

If more and more of your time seems to be spent with attorneys, engineers, and regulatory or elected officials, if you are experiencing greater and greater concern that your business is getting away from you, or if you're simply looking for more timely information, perhaps the ideas and examples in this article will be useful to you.  In any event, keep the tons flowing!

Editors note:  All forms included in this story are copyright-free.  Each can be tailored to your operations.  For full-size copies of the forms shown on pages 53, contact Gerry Roman at Scrap Processing and Recycling, 1627 K St., N.W., Ste. 700, Washington, D.C.  20006; 202/466-4050.

Top managers involved in steering their businesses toward success can get stuck at the helm, with little opportunity to walk through their facilities. If you have the sinking feeling that you're slipping too far from the daily management of plant personnel and equipment, the forms and advice in this article can help you regain control.