S2E10 -Turning the Wrench: How SPR Builds Solutions In-House

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Innovation Flow Podcast where we talk about park projects, spark people, everything park here at South Platte Renew. Speaking of that, we have Ronnie Harwood here today. He's a process maintenance supervisor, internal staff here at SPR, and Ronnie's going to talk to us about a program they have in the process maintenance division that's really taking off and, uh, and changing the way we do things. So thanks for being here, Ronnie.

Yeah, thanks, Blair. Thanks for having me.

You bet. Um, yeah, before we get to this, uh, this program that we're going to talk about, can you give the listeners a little bit of a background on who you are, where you came from, how you got into the, the role that you're in?

Yeah, so, uh, so I've been in maintenance for actually approximately 20 years, and, um, I, I went through an apprenticeship at one of my former employees. It was about 6 years long. And then kept honing my skills, honing my machining skills, my welding skills, all of the mechanical skills that I have. Nice. So I started as a, like, a Mechanic 1 here at the plant. I have had 4 jobs here at the plant. I've been the maintenance specialist, a mechanic, a master mechanic, and now I'm the maintenance supervisor. Cool. Yeah, that's where we're at now. And now I'm promoting all of our mechanics to get all the skill set and development that I had. Nice. Yeah.

That's good. You're giving it back. That's what we like to see, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you take us through, let the listeners know a little bit, like, what's the life of a process mechanic? What do you do all day? What kind of stuff do you work on? What do you do to it?

Sure. Yeah, so there'll be, so the morning is always an adventure. There's, uh, you come in and there'll be new work orders written up from operations and/or facilities maintenance, and then we will determine who is responsible for what work order in our department, and we will go out and repair the issues that arise. Um, like, for instance, we will, uh, if there's a pump making noise, there's a belt squeaking or something downstairs in the digester basement, We'll go down there, evaluate the situation, and determine what the next course of action is, whether it be tensioning the belt or realigning the sheaves from the motor to the pump itself. And yeah, it's kind of just like a— it's a new adventure every morning. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's pretty fun.

What, what other stuff do you work on around here? Pumps you mentioned.

Yeah.

What else? What other kind of equipment they got around here?

Yes, we have grinders, which are not the most fun equipment to work on. Yeah, as you might, might be able to tell by the name.

Yeah.

They do a pretty daunting task here at the, at the plant. But yeah, we'll, we'll have to rebuild those. We rebuild grinders, we rebuild pumps, gearboxes, pretty much anything that touches the process. The, the wastewater process here at the plant is our responsibility. So we will evaluate conditions of grinders and any of the other mechanical systems that we have here at the plant.

Cool. All right, well, let's, uh, well, let's get into the icebreaker question here before we get real deep into this, uh, this mill and lathe program. Uh, the icebreaker question: what is something you're really into that's totally unrelated to work? So what do you do outside of work that you're into now?

So there's a couple things. Um, And I know it's kind of up your wheelhouse is stand-up comedy.

Oh.

I'm a big fan of stand-up comedy. My wife and I have been to probably over 20 stand-up comedy shows. Wow. Yeah, my favorite comic right now is Andrew Santino. He's a redhead from Chicago. Oh. So that's where I'm from, Illinois. So it kind of hits home for me. But other than stand-up comedy and kind of in the realm of mechanics is I have a project car at home.

Okay.

And I've owned it since 2007, so I've had it for almost 20 years now. I've done a lot of work, a lot of engine work, bodywork, making it fast and fun. And, but yeah, it's— I actually took it to a car show over the weekend. Oh. And yeah, it was really fun. It's kind of nerve-wracking to drive because it's not the most reliable car anymore that I've done a lot of this work to it. Like, for instance, it was front-wheel drive when I bought it, and now it is all-wheel drive. I've converted it, so I've put a different vehicle's driveline in it, which is crazy. I mean, it's weird to think about, but yeah, so like building my car and stand-up comedy are kind of like my 2 main hobbies and things that I do outside of work.

Yeah, what kind of car is it?

So it's a Honda. It's a 2002 Honda. It's a hatchback. I built the motor fully. The internals of the motor are all new. I put a big turbocharger on it and it makes about 500 horsepower. For those people that know about little Hondas, that's a lot of power for that light of a car. Cool.

Where did this— have you always been good with your hands or wanting to build things, take things apart, put them back together? How did that come about, or is it just natural?

Yeah, so actually one of my earliest memories is taking one of the old big boomboxes with the speakers that are kind of detachable. Oh yeah. I don't remember why it stopped working, but me and my friend at the time, we took it apart to try to figure it out. And of course it didn't go back together correctly and never worked again. But the curiosity of what's inside of it and Why did this stop working? And can we figure it out? That's always been inside me. So yeah, like I said, that was probably a memory from when I was 4 or 5 years old. Oh yeah. So it's, it's always, it's in my genes.

Yeah, yeah, cool.

Yeah.

All right, well, let's talk about the, uh, the, uh, Mill and Lathe program, which is, uh, what, what we want to talk about today. Give us a little, uh, rundown first, maybe just Talk to me and the listeners about what is a milling lathe and what is it used for?

Yeah, so like the most basic explanation I can give on a mill would be— I imagine everybody's familiar with a hand drill.

Yeah.

So a mill would be a hand drill kind of turned up on its edge or on its end. So the Uh, drill bit would be facing down, and then there's a table that you clamp the part that you want to modify to, and that table can move in an X-axis and a Y-axis. So with that head of the mill stationary, you can move the table one way or the other depending on what parts you want to create and what measurements you need to to achieve. And then a lathe would kind of be a version of a drill as well, kind of diff— much different than a mill, I'm sorry. Um, but instead of the tool going into the, the chuck of the lathe, the part— so like a piece of shafting would go into the, the chuck of the lathe. Mm-hmm. And then there are tools and attachments on the bed of the lathe that once that shafting is turning in the lathe, that tool comes in contact with that material and shapes it to, um, whatever your desire is. Yeah. We can do threads, we can do grooves, we can do Yeah, all kinds of things. Recesses, we can cut slots and all kinds of, all kinds of fun stuff. Yeah, when it comes to those 2 machines, it's really cool.

So let's, let's talk about the whole program here, which is unique as far as I understand and what I've heard of having this kind of equipment in-house. Tell us how that came about and what the, what the value is In having that and having people that you're trained on, you know, you're training and they work on it?

Yeah, so how it came about was previously our strategy was to pull these large pumps out of service and send out for repair.

And these pumps look like—

Oh man, they're big.

I've seen them, yeah.

Yeah.

15, 20-foot-long huge shafts that go down?

Yeah, yeah, they're the vertical turbine pumps specifically. They go down into large wet wells and they can be anywhere between 5,000 pounds and 25,000 pounds that we have on site and the depth of about 35 feet. So we'd call a crane in and remove the pump from service and send to an outside vendor For a complete rehab.

Okay, how often does that— do you need to do that?

Um, we do a couple a year, a couple, 2, 3, 4 a year. Okay. Depending on our workload. But we would pull this pump, these pumps, and set them on the ground and wait for the freight service to come pick them up. And there was one pump specifically that sat on the ground for entirely too long. I don't know if— I can't remember if it was contract reasons or whatever, but We— I walked by it, drove by it 50 times, and I was thinking, why don't we do that in-house? One of our employees, when I was having that epiphany with this pump that was sitting on the ground, was a previous employee at a pump rebuild shop. So he, with his previous skill set, was a supporter of this as well. And, um, the cost that we would spend, or the, the price that we would pay to get these rehabbed outside of our shop, was a very large amount of money.

Yeah.

compared to what we can do it for in-house.

Okay.

Um, so of course we crunched the numbers, we, we laid out, you know, this is what it's going to cost for us to do it in-house with all our labor and, and materials and tooling and possibly outside services that we might need on some of this bigger equipment that we can't do in-house. Um, so the justification was there. And we put together a business case and presented it to the plant director, and it took us a couple times to do it, but yeah, we were given approval, and to date we have saved the plant approximately $186,000. Wow. In direct cost savings from us rebuilding these pumps in-house versus sending them out to outside vendors.

Cool.

Yeah, so, um, yeah, it's, it's really exciting. It's really cool to expand our responsibilities and, um, and coach and develop our team in, in this new, uh, realm of, uh, rebuild. Because these pumps aren't like other pumps that we've rebuilt. It's not like a centrifugal pump. I mean, these are As you know, long. Yeah. And a lot of shafting on the inside and a lot of alignment to be done and things like that. So it's cool to develop our crew and, uh, and see that and the interest that we have from our crew.

Yeah.

And the, and the willingness to do this, 'cause this isn't— these aren't easy jobs to do. And it's really cool to see our, our, uh, our team take on that responsibility. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's got to be gratifying to know that you can— I mean, these pumps have to work 24/7, 365. Like, there's no room for error. So it's not like you can do it kind of, kind of well. You got to do it perfect, basically, for everything to work together. So I could see, I could see it being a little scary, you know, having someone else. You got someone else to blame if it's, if it's wrong. You do it yourself. Yeah, it's all on you. It's on us.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, Unfortunately, we have had a little bit of a hiccup on one of our rebuilds in the past where we have had to remove it from service after we had rebuilt it. But the good thing about that is it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to send it back out to a vendor. We have a very good idea of what the issue is on the internals.

Yeah.

On the internals of the pump. And then we can disassemble it just enough where we can fix the issues and put it back together and reinstall it all in-house. So again, there's, there's a big savings on the freight and the, and the, the contracts that we have to develop and all that. Yeah, so it's, it's really cool to be able to do that all in-house.

Cool. Well, you mentioned cost, you know, the cost to send it, the cost of A private company to do it. So I get the cost piece. Are there other benefits to the program kind of unrelated to cost? Are you seeing any other side benefits or ancillary benefits of this program?

Yeah, so, um, I mean, it kind of ties to cost a little bit, but so any of the shafting or any of the, uh, um, like wear sleeves and wear rings and things that we use throughout the plant on not just the vertical turbine pumps, but the centrifugal pumps, the positive displacement pumps, we can fabricate parts for those pumps as well, which builds our inventory up, which helps us in the long run as far as keeping the plant fully operational and keeping these pumps up quicker, faster, and longer. Yeah. Than having to order the shaft that we don't have on the shelf. So now it's a, it could be a 30-week lead time on some of these crazy parts. But no, it'll take us 3 days to make it instead of waiting that long. Yeah. So yeah, the uptime, the quickness that we can have these pumps back in operation is great for the pump or for the plant. Also, just building the camaraderie in our shop. The, the guys that have gone through the program and, and achieved success and have been signed off on the program are coaching the newer guys. Yeah. Coming up too, which is awesome. And I have, I have, uh, 2 brothers that work in our department, and, and the younger brother has passed the, uh, and got the sign-off on the program. And just a couple few weeks ago, he was coaching his older brother on the lathe, which is, you know, it's kind of a maybe competition aspect on that front. But it's cool to see. I mean, they get together really well otherwise, but it's cool to see, uh, the younger brother coaching the older brother kind of thing.

So do your, uh, your people respond? I mean, I guess you could come and say This is, you know, I didn't sign up for this. There's a lot to learn. This is complex stuff. Or are they eager to jump in and get it figured out?

Oh yeah. Luckily, we've built a team within the last 5 or 6 years that are ready and willing to learn and excited to learn. And this aspect of mechanicking is a very valuable aspect. Yeah. And not only is it valuable here, but if they were ever to leave, And to go to any other heavy industrial, uh, um, site that has this machinery, that's going to be very valuable. Yeah. To another employer and will, I guarantee, have a leg up on competition. Yeah. That, that doesn't have this type of training.

Yeah, well, don't let them leave.

Yeah, I'm doing my best. All right, we're keeping them, we're keeping them in in-house as much as we can.

I wonder, makes me wonder how many people in the US are like doing this. Probably very few rebuilding giant vertical turbine pumps on, you know, with special— I mean, I bet there are very few.

Yeah, I mean, because just 5 years ago, 6 years ago, we were sending them out to specialty shops, and now we're doing it in-house and training our staff. Yeah, and it's really cool. Um, to think of these skills, um, they, they have been in, in, uh, in the mechanics trades for a long time. Mm-hmm. But as everybody knows, the mechanicking that— and the trades people aren't— the trades aren't being fulfilled with the upcoming generations. So the, the fact that we can train newer generations or even older generations on these skills that have been in the works for a long time, yeah, it's really cool to keep that alive, you know?

Yeah.

It's, it's cool. It's cool to be a part of that.

Yeah, it is. It's cool to like I'm sure a lot of people think, oh, wastewater process mechanic, you're, you're wrenching on pipes full of sewage all day, which is some of that, but you're also like the equipment and the technology. Yeah, in the equipment and the, you know, specifications that you gotta hit. It's like incredible technology, which I don't think people always realize, but it's, it's amazing what you, what you got down there.

Yeah, these, these machines are precision machines, like down to the thousandths. of an inch. So the fact that we are doing that in-house now and, and relying on our staff to do that, because we can buy all the material to rebuild these pumps internally, but if the machine work is done wrong, that material is now scrap.

Yeah.

So what we're, what we're training is the precision and, and the and the patience and the understanding of these machines and what it takes to get them to that precise measurement.

Yeah.

To fit all correctly and run correctly. So yeah.

Have you found they've gone back together better than that initial boombox that you took apart?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our pumps that we take apart are going back together much smoother and fully operational. Sweet.

Well, it's a good thing because, yeah, we pump 20 million gallons through here every day and you gotta have, like I say, there's no room for error. There's no holding tank we can put it in if something breaks. So it's like, it amazes me the amount of resiliency, the amount of equipment you gotta have and it's gotta be working together all the time or being fixed by people like you.

Yeah, the constant running of these pumps and this equipment is very important for, for the community and for the plant. And the fact that we get to rebuild them and keep them operational and keep that uptime is, is awesome. Yeah, it's great to be a part of.

Yeah, well, thanks for, uh, coming by and sharing it. Yeah, with us today. I think it's a great, uh, great program. And like, I think the cost, the time savings is great, but also the The camaraderie you spoke of and the feeling of pride you get when you do rebuild one of these things. I think a lot of that can't be quantified in a business case, but I know it's there because you can see it, you can feel it in the program.

Yeah, yeah.

Cool.

Thanks, Clay.

All right, are you ready for the end-of-show quiz, Ronnie?

Let's do it.

All right, I'm going to give you a choice here.

All right.

You can either take Famous Founders, Superstores, or Partners. Which ones of those do you like?

I'll go with superstores, I guess.

Superstores, okay. Let's see what we have in store here. There's 4 questions.

Okay.

Uh, they all relate to superstores somehow. What retail giant began life as a mail-order catalog in 1888?

Sears?

Sears, you got it. All right, you're off to a good start. Uh, what consumer electronic retailer sends out its Geek Squad To set up or repair computers?

Best Buy.

Best Buy. 2 for 2. Let's keep it going. Which company uses the slogan, let's build something together?

Oh, oh man. Radio Shack.

No, Lowe's.

Okay.

Let's build something together. All right. Last one here. You can go 3 for 4. Which company hires athletes to do flexible jobs with benefits so they can train for the Olympics? Hire Olympic athletes part-time, give them benefits, let them train.

Yeah, Walmart. I don't know.

Home Depot. All right, well, you got 2 for 4. That's pretty good. All right, nice job. And nice job with the mill and lathe program and the whole maintenance program around here. Everything— well, knock on wood— everything's usually running well and chugging right along, and that's thanks to you and your crew. crew and the good work you do.

So thank you very much.

Yeah, right on, Ronnie. And to the listeners, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you liked the episode, give us a thumbs up, give us a like on whatever podcast you're listening to, whatever podcast player you're listening on. If you like the show, tell a friend, tell a neighbor, tell a person in line at Home Depot next to you, and maybe we can get more listeners that way. And we'll see you next time on the Innovation Flow Podcast.