When the bubble pops

Hello dear friends, how are you all? It’s funny why I keep asking how you are in my introductions. Has life been good to you? Let me ask you something, have you ever hidden a problem then it goes BOOM! One day when you least expect it?

But before anything else, let me give thanks to my dear sponsors

Now last April 21 just this year, around 5PM at that time, I overheard on the hand held radio from where I work at, the maintenance personnel saying that the Silo#4 that we have containing wheat to be mixed in animal feed is empty.

He opened the funnel to the production but nothing came out: he reported it to the supervisor and the manager. There was supposed to have over 300 hundred tons in the silo. But where has it gone?

So there were four silos in the feed mill where I work for and we put wheat and corn in it: it can contain as many as 2 million kilos each silo ( can you picture how many this is?). These days, our need for wheat is lesser than the corn that is why three silos were allocated for the corn and silo 1 was for wheat. It has been 7 months since we first loaded it with wheat and we intended to empty it that week so we would be able to distinguish the storage and process loss of the whole, and to fumigate it because it had been infested with weevils. On Monday, Silo one was emptied and we planned on putting the delivered wheat that week in Silo4 which is the only vacant at that time.

Two weeks has passed and there had been 17 trucks delivered in total, plus there were corn delivered too! And the conveyor that drags the grain up whether it is corn or wheat is the same. The operator will only tell the machine what silo should the item be placed.

At this time also, the corn delivered was to be put in Silo 3: whilst the usage should be from the Silo 2.

After hearing that the Silo 4 is really empty, everyone panicked! No one has the slightest idea where the items were. Men climbed up, the tower where the conveyor and the opening of the silo were and they found out that the Silo 2 slide gate is half open! Wheat and corn is alternately put in the silo2as well as the usage, it means that we are using one silo in the same time, without the operator knowing and it had caused the biggest problem ever!

The corn costs 22 pesos and wheat only costs around 17, I think, just my estimation and they don’t have the same amount of nutrients in them.

The plant manager decided to keep the problem discreet, to find way to trouble shoot it and here are the plans that they have:

1. Discern the percentage of the wheat/corn mixture and use it in the formulation, be it we add corn or wheat whichever the formula has more than the other. This seems to be a bit tricky because the consistency of the mixture is never known.

2. Sieve the mixture using a screen that would accommodate the wheat and fall. This way, the two will separate and be bagged in the lower level of the building. This is the fastest way but very expensive because man power and electricity is much needed in this one, plus when we do this, we should stop the production first. And they do it on Sundays after the scheduled weekly preventive maintenance of the feed mill.

Everything was going fine until lunch. The general a manager and the plat manager had a talk and asked him if it was true he admitted it all and now they are having a meeting: the general manager, plant manager the planner, and the Silo operator.

We wondered where they got the news? Maybe someone is being a Marittes in here, we just do not know who. But we were still thankful that the bosses already knew about the problem. Right now, they are in a meeting. The company where the feed mill equipments was bought, their staff was also asked to come today and join the meeting. Probably to discuss on how to prevent the same thing to happen over again. I hope it would all end well, with the minimal scolding as ever.

Closing thoughts:

Problems are sometimes like a balloon filled with water or air, there will come a time that it will definitely pop whether we like it or not. So best tell the boss or if happened in real life, tell the parents or the people involved so that it will not come to the time when the problem will be unbearable and will hurt everyone else. There is always an option to talk things out. Do you agree? It might be difficult, people might get angry but the important thing is that we make a move to solve it the peaceful way.

I may have said too much, I may not sound good but I hope you would understand the things that I blurted out here. Keep safe my dear read friends. God bless us all.