Singapore Readymix/Kobe plant 1982-83

The last of the South East Asian employment ventures – once again as a contract employee of Readymix.
By this time I had pretty much had my fill of working under Asian conditions. But a telephone call from Laurie McMahon, with the assurance that this was just modifications on a brand new unworkable crushing plant that had been designed by the Kobe company of Japan, and that instead of working with Chinese, I would have English speaking Malaysian workers at my disposal, and of course everything was brand new including a large fully equipped workshop.

The time frame was flexible, but centred around the simple fact that Kobe had contracted to build a turn key plant of high capacity, and after several weeks of operation, the target figure had proved impossible to meet because of continual equipment failure. So the consortium of Chinese/Malaysian owners had simply refused to pay up! Interestingly, Readymix had paid up for the rights to operate the plant, and they were losing money heavily, and so it was, that their only chance of making any money, was to sort out the problems at their own expense, while the warring parties took their own legal action!

Laurie had been re-employed for this thankless task, but he was already at war with the Readymix brass as in the past, but they had approved my addition to the local workforce, the management of which, had no idea how to deal with the enormous problems at hand. I arrived on the job shortly afterwards, the plant with a major breakdown several days old, and was appalled at the extent of the design errors of which Laurie was well aware. There were a few major problems that had to be addressed immediately, including the present breakdown, and so we formulated a plan that saw me redesigning and building new sections and parts in the workshop full time. I started at the primary end of the plant, while at the same time being on hand to supervise the numerous breakdowns, and making on the spot decisions as to not only repair, but immediately modify, to prevent a re-occurrence of the problem. It was soon obvious that none in the onsite workforce was interested in the continual operation of the machinery – there were no incentives, and a broken down plant meant that virtually all the workforce sat down and played cards until the wheels turned again!

So it was that soon I was making sure that the wheels kept turning! Any stoppage meant that the entire workforce was set to work doing necessary maintenance and as many small upgrades as I could find about the place, necessary parts and modifications being an ongoing part of the workshop's work list – to be implemented the moment the plant looked like being motionless for any length of time. Some modifications were carried out during the night time hours. I was lucky in that I had a fellow Australian in charge of the secondary section of the plant which was separate, but while he was capable of good maintenance and improving the machinery, his section of the plant was reliant on the production from the primary section. But so far primary production hadn't even approached any sort of pressure on his section, and he was keen to help in any way that he could.

After a couple of weeks I had a host of improvements under way with supervised crews working on a night shift basis. Every morning would see some new improvement in place, and one less thing to cause trouble! Unfortunately, no breakdowns, brought it's own crop of problems, showing up even more design errors.
The most irritating aspect of the whole job was that the Kobe Company had a collection of their own engineers in a brand new administration building on site. Their job had been to supervise construction and commission the plant – but when things didn't work, they had no onsite workforce to carry out any sort of corrective work. They really had little idea of what to do anyway, this being the first complex of this kind that Kobe had designed and built!

So I found my every move on site being accompanied by Japanese engineers with clip boards and cameras slung around their necks. Each morning they would be on hand to record any work carried out overnight, and should a breakdown occur, they would be on hand immediately to record our every move until the plant rolled once more. They had a certain legal right to be there, but Laurie was infuriated and took every step possible to ban them from the site. This placed him in the firing line of every company involved with even the investors weighing in at one point – but on our side!

So the weeks passed. We recruited my son Dean from Australia who I could at least give a remedial job and know that he would carry it out, no matter what the ongoing difficulties. I had also sorted out the workshop, getting the workers up off their haunches on the floor, blowing holes in the new concrete, and working at newly built benches. By this time I could tackle some of the more annoying on-going problems – the replacement of all the steel plate and rubber stone containment arrangements on the conveyor systems. I streamlined this replacement with standard units, and had one crew trained to make up the finished sections during the working day, and being on full time standby to replace a section during the noon shut down period, or during an ongoing breakdown. This was their sole responsibility and once implemented, they became enthusiastic about replacing every faulty section on the plant, taking great pride in doing so!

Another big problem was the conveyor drives which were all open chains and sprockets – this system was unbelievable in the modern world, and there were more than 40 of them throughout the plant. After a few weeks the wear was horrendous, exposed as they were to the dirt and dust. But worse was to come – wear meant that the chains all started to jump the sprockets resulting in broken electric drive units. The only remedy – new units and chains and sprockets! So I designed standard oil bath covers in several necessary sizes, and this provided more work for the workshop crews, who once having made one cover and fitted it and seen the great improvement to performance, were quick to start on the next one – fitting them at the rate of one every few days or so without any supervision. This was the great advantage of the Malaysian workforce, there was still a percentage of shirkers – but the average worker was enthusiastic and keen to improve his skills.

I did have one particular worker who had trained in Australia to be an airline pilot, but his training wasn't recognised by the Malaysian airlines, and he could only find odd local work. However his father was a local financial guru, and one of the company investors. He came to me as a well educated foreman well versed in the peculiarities of the Singapore workforce and as such was a great right hand man, one of his greatest attributes was that he was usually aware of the infiltration of the workforce by undesirables, and always knew what was going on at the site. This cleared up problems such as tools being spirited away through the perimeter fence during the night shifts, and convenient holes being cut in the fence etc. As an Australian, I had no hope of keeping tabs on such goings on!

After about 9 months of steady improvements in production, we had reached and passed the rated tonnages expected and breakdowns were almost unknown. My job was over – but not before Laurie was unceremoniously dismissed once the job was done – company politics once more! But we had the last laugh! Readymix had only signed a one year contract with the opportunity of renewal, but with the plant running smoothly and the money rolling in – the consortium who owned the operation, refused to let Readymix take up the option, mainly on the basis that they had failed to reach the yearly production target, and took over the production themselves!