US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7607

On May 23 2017 06:48 KwarK wrote:
My current job had a lab manager buying huge amounts of liquid nitrogen delivered by truck every few weeks. The purpose of this was to evaporate it into ultrapure nitrogen gas for use as an inert purging gas. I'm the genius who pointed out that if we don't need it really compressed, or cold, or liquid, couldn't we just purify air? Ran the numbers, got some quotes, put together a proposal and got us a nitrogen generator.

We're talking six figure savings already on that.

On May 23 2017 06:53 Nevuk wrote:

As some would put it, you're destroying jobs with your efficiency. Think of all the nitrogen makers who can no longer afford to feed their children with this mindless waste eliminated.

On May 23 2017 06:52 Mohdoo wrote:


LMFAO

Holy shit. Ahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahaha. My impression is that you do some kinda legal or accounting sorta stuff, so this is hilarious to read. The idea that some people had to figure out a way to get pure nitrogen, but didn't actually know anything about working in a lab...and the thing they decided on was giant can of liquid N2 is plain and simply amazing. And the fact that you walked in and wondered "why does this need to be cold" LMAO

This post totally brightened my day. I'm sharing it, if you don't mind. I know a lot of people who would get an enormous kick out of this. God damn. so amazing.

On May 23 2017 07:06 KwarK wrote:

You have it backwards. The engineers were the ones who built the LN2 setup, it's the accountants (in this case me) who show up and go "okay, so it looks like we're spending all our money on liquid nitrogen, what exactly does the liquid nitrogen do?". The system was a tanker truck would drive over and pump 10,000 gallons of the stuff at once into our storage tanks. It would be evaporated over a few weeks and then we'd have them drive out and give us some more. Classic "we've always done it that way thinking". The engineer was happy, he asked for 5 9s purity and he got 5 9s purity so why worry.

It was one of my first forays into cost accounting. What we've got now is actually 4 9s (we could do 5 9s but it was much cheaper (and only slightly more complex) to get a 4 9s generator and put additional low volume purifiers on the tools that wanted the extra purity) but it's all good.

Incidentally I got quotes from our supplier for liquid nitrogen at lower purities too. They told us that they could do 3 9s and 4 9s for less than we were paying for 5 9s and it'd work fine because it's taken from the same tank as the 5 9s, it's just they don't certify it 5 9s so it's not as good. Same product, worse paperwork. Naturally we had been paying for the top paperwork.

On May 23 2017 07:20 Plansix wrote:
When I started, we used to request title runs through a written request we sent out by mail. This was because the company liked paper requests and didn’t like using email for security reasons. We sometimes needed rush title runs, so we would send them by UPS overnight as amazing costs. And we would pick them up in person, rather than have them sent over by mail. It seemed crazy, so I asked why we did it that way. No one could tell me, simply saying it was how they were trained. It has been passed down to them from the employees before them and was the law of the land. It as the way things were done and the attorneys got their title runs on time and when they needed them.

So I called the title company asking if we could email the requests. They said no, because they need the account information and didn’t want to pay for secure email. So I asked if we could fax it, which they said was fine. And they had a courier that could drop them off daily if we paid a small charge per request.

So for like 10+ years people had been mailing requests to this place simply because no one asked them if it was cool to fax them over. This is the efficiency of the free market in action. Every place I have worked at has been like this. I feel Kwarks pain in so many ways.

On May 23 2017 07:16 Mohdoo wrote:


This is even better. I had assumed it was some middle man who decided on where the nitrogen would come from, not the engineer lmao. Then again, depending on what type of engineer, he may not have a clue either.

"We've always done it this way" is incredibly dangerous and expensive. Either way, you're a hero and I will be sharing this story liberally.

On May 23 2017 07:38 KwarK wrote:

Lab manager literally had no idea what LN2 costs, wasn't his concern. He got pushed into retirement shortly after I took over the money here. We don't even have a lab manager anymore, we have a lead technician with 20+ years at Intel, about the same number working as a mechanic, and basically no formal education. The two of us have removed about 80% of the operating costs with the revolutionary idea of talking to each other about what actually happens and how much it costs. I can identify that we were spending a shitton of money on insanely high grade pump oil but I don't really know what the fuck that is or if we should be. Meanwhile the tech has no way of knowing that the stuff that is leaking everywhere because the old lab manager was worthless is liquid gold because why would he. The pump oil needed to be replaced every so often so the old lab manager never bothered fixing the leaks, he just topped it up with new oil and let time act as a natural filtration system. We've now fixed the leaks and pay a local firm to recondition the oil for us when it's time.

Efficiency basically comes down to having good people who want to be good at their jobs, as far as I can tell. The default state is insane levels of waste in every sector and it's only through active efforts that the waste can be pushed back. And even then we were lucky the lab manager didn't have enough clout with the top to fight back and that these kind of ideas are exactly what they hired me to do.

On May 23 2017 07:38 KwarK wrote:

Lab manager literally had no idea what LN2 costs, wasn't his concern. He got pushed into retirement shortly after I took over the money here. We don't even have a lab manager anymore, we have a lead technician with 20+ years at Intel, about the same number working as a mechanic, and basically no formal education. The two of us have removed about 80% of the operating costs with the revolutionary idea of talking to each other about what actually happens and how much it costs. I can identify that we were spending a shitton of money on insanely high grade pump oil but I don't really know what the fuck that is or if we should be. Meanwhile the tech has no way of knowing that the stuff that is leaking everywhere because the old lab manager was worthless is liquid gold because why would he. The pump oil needed to be replaced every so often so the old lab manager never bothered fixing the leaks, he just topped it up with new oil and let time act as a natural filtration system. We've now fixed the leaks and pay a local firm to recondition the oil for us when it's time.

Efficiency basically comes down to having good people who want to be good at their jobs, as far as I can tell. The default state is insane levels of waste in every sector and it's only through active efforts that the waste can be pushed back. And even then we were lucky the lab manager didn't have enough clout with the top to fight back and that these kind of ideas are exactly what they hired me to do.

On May 23 2017 07:54 Mohdoo wrote:


I've never heard my job justified as well as you just did. I am (mainly) a process development engineer (I use chemistry and physics to make tiny little computer chips), so my job is to make sure that, for the things I am responsible for, every component is exactly as it should be and that everything has a direct justification. Interestingly, I've recently started to feel like a lot of the skills I've built could be used in oversight and similar stuff. The skill of "What are we trying to do, how and why are doing it the way we do, and how could we do it better" is a surprisingly deep/diverse avenue to pursue.