Rest in peace to the PdC employee who passed away this morning due to an “industrial accident”. Please keep family in thoughts and prayers.
Details aren’t really released yet. Tragic stories like these make me want to distance from Mother Mining as much as anything else. Just sad
28 replies (most recent on top)
So sad. I know the PdC director and he is a good guy, and a good leader. He’s got to be destroyed by this. We have invested tens, maybe hundreds of millions in improving winder safety over past year. Just heartbreaking. Last thing we needed. Thoughts and prayers to the family. Just don’t know what is broken in our EHS culture.
even the previous chief of safety alexheard gave up and left the company, what does it speak of his confidence level of the safety here
RIP to 3m employee. We are fighting the good fight to keep our jobs. 3 deaths in 15 months. Something has to change in the safety department. Our facility is the same loosing maintenance that's been here for over 10 years. ALL of them leaving, is the new standard pink tape and less bolts? When will the deaths stop... lawsuits? That seems to be the only way 3m takes notice.
LIP SERVICE to talk about SAFETY FIRST.
As Tireman what would he do differently, if the fatality was one of his loved ones.
- very REACTIVE safety leadership*
Typically waits for accident to happen before investigating actions.
Just saw the corporate safety bulletin going out to all plants to review winder safety features.
The management could have prevented such fatality if they had invested in proper automation.
theere is very little inveested in plants nowadays. a lot of equipment is held together by literally duct tape. we are so short staffed that our maintenance guys take out 3 bolts and put 2 bolts back in. everything in our plant is falling apart. the budgets keep getting cut. overrtime is cut and good mechanics/teechs are leavving. its ridiculous.
Thanks for commenting on the PDC leader. Hopefully, he has a chance to help the people move to a better place than they feel this week. If he came in within the last year, not much you can do to fix longstanding safety issues while being new and having no money.
I talked a few years ago to a friend who worked for many years at Dupont. That company was the envy of the chemical industry and was THE LEADER in best safety practices and performance for the last half of the 20th century.
Somewhere along the way, a bean counter wall street buttkisser made it to CEO and started scrutinizing spending to the final penny. My friend mentioned that while good safety habits and teamwork helped, you can only do so much when the big bosses cut back on maintenance and capital spending to placate a group of Wall Street MBAs who never had to hook up rail cars of fuming sulfuric acid in rubber suits in 90 degree weather.
After a number of years of disinvestment, plants were falling apart. More people getting hurt. And corporate HQ blamed and fired the plant managers who had their maintenance budgets slashed to next to nothing.
Check out on Google "Dupont Laporte 2014" to see all of the things that led to a deadly accident claiming four workers. Faulty ventilation (fan was broken and work order sat open for months because the plant was overbudget), emergency truck wouldn't start, mechical failures not addressed that allowed the chemical that ki-led the people to accumulate in liquid form in the vent system, etc.
3M is going to have one of these tragedies soon if they continue to go down the road Dupont went down.
If you have a high enough numbers score to retire, you need to challenge tireman during his next townhall on not spending nearly enough to fix these issues.
So frigging sad what happened to this company!
The only safety tip that I learnt from Tireman is
Use the handrail
Wahahaha
For those asking about the PdC Site Director, current leader is a one of the good guys. Very thoughtful in his approach to TVOS and empowering others onsite. That said, his resources from larger 3M are VERY limited.
TC, PG and others should be held accountable for the constraints and safety liability when you fail to invest in the most profitable plants.
THIS is the kind of thing that someone needs to ask in the Townhalls!
Manufacturing facilities should do what the masking plant in Ireland does. Let the managers run the machines. I hear union action is looming there but its a small player so should not affect the SIBG numbers
The PdC director job was posted externally last summer. Not sure if it ended by an experienced hire or internal transfer. Whoever it was, less a year into it and they have accountability for the most tragic event a leader can ever experience. Either way (3Mer or external), that person will be put on leave pending investigation. Probably offered a modest package to leave quietly.
Back in the 90s, someone died at our site in an accident. The site director got reassigned to a do-nothing job at HQ and retired during the next wave of cuts. That was the way they handled fatalities back then. Just move the person to a meaningless role until they get bored and leave.
For the rest of PdC, please know some of us know what you are going through and know what it's like to someday run equipment that maybe just a few weeks earlier claimed the life of a colleague. RIP to this women.
Tireman has been a 3M employee for 18 months and 3M has had 3 fatalities in the past 15 months.
Tireman likes to think history began when he joined 3M and 3Mers knew nothing before he arrived but 3M has never had this many fatalities in this short of a timeframe.
Fatalities are inexcusable and unacceptable. Tireman must be fired.
ASD business is going to have a rough patch ahead. SIBG rocks!
@xkw+1my5QXTt - Your statement just isn't true.
No plant can really replicate PdC's abrasive output. Yamagata can only do a fraction of the solvent-based ScotchBrites. None of the others can do solvents at all. Also that oddball Trizact maker isn't replicated anywhere.
Also, the PdC ScotchBrites have very, very good profit margins.
Looks like the PdC plant director can get his early retirement package
The 911 call happened just before 7 am yesterday. The person was declared dead on the scene. The flight to lacrosse of a senior executive makes sense. 1 hr drive isn't that long if the lacrosse airport is easier in and out.
As for the poster on investing in businesses with higher margins, I am clearly no fan or mcnerney but he did shift investment to faster growing businesses or businesses with higher margins.
The deinvestment at PdC and others likely started under Inge and then accelerated under Mike. Inge borrowed how.many billions to boost the stock price to 250? As is now clear to many, he did this to scare away any activist investors from doing to 3M what they did to Dupont and Dow. This money should have been plowed back into the plants and field reps.
PdC is making abrasive products…but output should not be disrupted as they have many other sites. Looks like this plant is going to be shut for a while for “investigation”
The PdC is one of the most impressive 3M plants — This plant is one of the most critical plants for multiple divisions, whether it be Process IP or Margin Production, PdC is instrumental. And the people! The people are INCREDIBLE.
Unfortunately I’m sure there are many reasons for this awful accident, but overall, I think the executives (and JG 16/17) need to start sharing the amount of investment each plant is receiving vs that plants contribution to margin for the business.
How is a plant expected to set their TVOS for the entire year, in Jan? Budgets so tight they can’t get simple parts approved. They hustle to hire and train just to let those same people go and pay another signing bonus 3 months later.
The field feels this same way too. They call on industrial customers all day, then tour our plants and think, “This is how we’re reinvesting?” The production teams should be some of the most coveted 3Mrs in our organization but I don’t believe they feel that way.
As someone very close to the business, the money isn’t going to the plant, it’s not going to the field, it’s not going into R&D…
Let’s see what Tireman has to say. He claims safety is always his priority.
So far, all I could recall is that they implemented the Handrail when using stairs initiative.
Alexheard must be glad to have left 3M. Otherwise he would be held responsible
La Crosse I don't think would be the airport for an Exec visit at PdC. La Crosse is over an hour's drive to the plant.
PdC has an airport that can handle the jets only a couple miles from the plant. The jets can't take off with maximum fuel load there, the runway is too short. However they can very easily take off with more than enough fuel to safely take 12 people back to St. Paul.
(The runway charts I've found say they can carry roughly half fuel out of there on a summer day, that is enough fuel to make the west coast.)
That said, another flight N83M did do a quick trip to La Crosse yesterday. Landing around noon and returning around 5pm. Maybe related?
For years, 3M has had a special budget for bigger safety projects that are discovered either by employees or government agencies. The budget was meant to allow the improvements to be made without blowing up the plants budget. Forget the name of it but it's been around a while.
Didn't tireman slash this special budget by 50 percent last year. I remember reading something here about it, even though 3M wouldn't say anything internally about this cut on its internal website. How ironic if it was tireman who visited last week and spewed his "the only fixed cost is depreciation" BS again. Time for you to return to selling tire or lattes. Leave old man!
Very sad to read the story. It was a 57 year old woman. The newsline stated they had to use an extrication device. This has happened before when a person gets trapped or crushed in machinery. RIP. I was at a site about 25 years ago when someone died from an accident. The trauma for the rest of the team is long-lasting.
Didn't an exec visit this plant like last week if the “3M radar” private jet movements are accurate/correct (flew to la crosse wi, closest 3M location woulda been PdC). Timing just seems coincidental..
RIP to that worker. Very sh**ty that someone lost their life because of mmm
m,m,m: don't care, you are just a number, the very job will be filled next week to keep production going,sorry for being so harsh but i have first hand seen the tramps in management do this,
This is the 2nd work place fatality I have heard of @ a 3M plant in the past year or two. What the heck is going on with safety?
3M Prairie Du Chein. Prayers and condolences.
Incredibly sad to hear. I can’t help but recognize that in the 3M plants I have visited, our EHS controls do not seem to be up to par. Another result of our unwillingness to invest into automation and better manufacturing practices due to budget cutting.