“as you know in paper it’s always “all hands on deck” when something breaks.”
It was the worst in the supporting auxiliary systems like steam. We were looked on as bleeping necessities, but certainly not the core money-maker. We were expected to have 100% availability and woe to us if we caused an outage in the paper making part of the business.
I once had a mill manager ask me why the lines in converting weren't working? I explained water in the airlines was interfering with valves. He asked me to "show him where the holes were in the airlines, where the water gets inside?" I told him I think it comes from somewhere near the shipping area.
It wasn't worth the words. I told my boss and he agreed. That mill manager made the utilities department bypass the air dryers just 24 hours earlier. The replacement repair parts were too expensive. He shopped his stupid request around until someone said " sure, we can run without dryers".
The whole mill limped up and down for months. The solution was to rent mobile compressors that have dryers self contained for $30K per week. For six months..... The maintenance crew that could fix the dryers for $15K spent those six months keeping diesel fuel in the mobile compressors filled up. The number one priority at every top managers meetings was diesel fuel and not running out.