Bolts, Bowties and Battlefields

In the QC- Fit Report submitted by BSEE in 2016(the Bureau of Safety Environment Enforcement) it?discuss better vetting of technical authorities in the supply chain of Oil Equipment Manufactures. Primarily discussing bolt manufacturing and the supply chain vendors who help make up the end product. Many times the cost association with fasteners is seen as a commodity part and something only China wants to attempt. Making those that do provide fastener manufacturing and services seeing?small percentages with heavy investments. In recent years?API (American Petroleum Institute) ?SC 20E (which deals with bolting) ?and SC 21 (which handles materials) has defined?the outliers which?have troubled the industry in the?past. Tighting up supply chain vendors, calling out for things to be as compliant to API-Q1 as possible without using the word (SHALL) to mandate the license. Although, complying?with API Q1, only shows how well someone knows how to do their paperwork and follow purchase orders. What we need to vet is the technical knowledge of a vendor to be able to produce what is given to him/ her in the form of a Engineering Drawing, Material Specification and Coating/ Plating Specification. Something that, experience within the industry, seems to be the only way to get.?

The BOWTIE

A bowtie is very different than a regular long tie. When you were young and had to wear a tie to your cousin's wedding, or Christmas dinner. Your father, or neighbor across the street (Mr. Richard) would put the tie around his neck, tie it on himself, sometimes in front of a mirror and then loosen the knot to place it over your head and tighten it back down. With a bowtie you can not do this. No one can tie a bowtie for you around their neck and loosen it to fit yours. It is one of those things we need to learn to do ourselves. Everyone you see that is wearing a bowtie is a technical authority in bowties. They practice the application firsthand?and wear it with distinction. A bowtie policy is what we need in the industry to vet vendors?that we need to be able to rely on for critical measures.?Writing a technical authority audit for each vendor is what we need in order to judge how well they know their trade.?Giving an engineer specification drawing from an oil equipment manufacture and having the vendor establish an engineering report of their services, work traveller, a correction step for internal mistakes and provides a level of responsibility, know how.

The Plan of Attack

When we design a part, it is done much like a General giving orders to a battle plan. The Engineer (General), designs an engineering drawing (Battle strategy) with dimensions, materials, hardness, includes tolerances and special processes, finishes, sometimes handling instructions. It is up to the vendors (field officers), who hopefully are able to tie a bowtie, to decide how this part is made (the battle is accomplished). Problems crop up in battle and it is the?Captains and?Colonels (technical authority in vendor processes) that have to use their abstract knowledge to determine how the?battle can be won.

Abstract knowledge-?is the knowledge one has, that is used to be able to overcome short comings and to know the limits of a processes capability.?

Vendors in ?supply chain processes such as; heat treating, machinist, NDTs, coating/ plating applicators, mills, forgers, hardness measurements, etc... There are many critical points (just like a battlefield) that have to be watched and closely managed. Rushing to bring the price per part down is a obstacle we face in supply chain?and in doing so?we sometimes exchange price for knowledge. When we cheapen the value of a part to only price, we sometimes lose the ability to trace processes back to their dimensions, responsibility for a process to be done entirely in-house?, and lose onsite technical authority. ?Knowledge of the processes being administered to the point that abstract knowledge could play apart in the whole of the system is the key to a winning strategy. ?

Example: If?you have a Hum-VEE going to see action in the middle east, but the vehicles do not have armor piercing round plates?on the assault vehicle, you would say something, like. "?I hope these vehicles are not going to see action, because a .223 round could easily penetrate the skin of the gas tank."

Having knowledge of the intent of the part you are making, processing, and/ or the environment it will see can make you an expert to a small degree.

In the armed forces it is not the generals who call in airstrikes on targets, it is the Captains and Cornels who deal with deviations in the plans.

"No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force." -Field Marshall Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke

Meaning once the Engineer Drawings are drawn, it is anyones guess what happens next. Calling out for deviations in engineering specs happen and are costly, but not nearly as costly as letting it go to the field to fail. If you have?Vendors?that are capable of?foresight and seeing the over all plan, you have won the battle. So start looking for those vendors who wear a bowtie, they could just make the biggest difference in your bottomline. Since this was written back in 2016, we have written 20P for the API, which will cover coatings and platings. In it we define a Technical Authority and include their participation. A step I am very proud of and one I feel will do exactly what this article was set out to accomplish 8 years ago.