Wow, what a few busy weeks!!! Trying to get settled into dealing with the union labor issues, time entry crap, HR (could write a book about how much fun this has been this week) and trying to get the shops put back together. I've been averaging 9-10 miles walking each day between the two sides of the plant. One more week to go and I'm over on the smelter side full time. It will be nice to stay in one spot and not jump back and forth between the two departments.
It is really cool to see our whole plant as one business unit instead of the old Alcoa being three different business units. If one side of the plant loses a little bit because metal prices are up or down, the other side makes up for it. It has been a wild ride bringing a plant back from an 18 month no upkeep closure to being able to turn equipment back on and test stuff.
Come Monday morning we start our Green Mill and commence producing carbon blocks for the ring furnace to cure and anode assembly to build anodes for the pot lines. All of the folks are back from layoff and work will start on Monday digging out the pots of old aluminum and getting them ready to start on the 4th of December.
Amazing team effort in 10 weeks. It will be 76 days on Monday from when Alcoa announced they will restart our smelter, and it will be the day we press our first carbon block. Something like 700 LBS of carbon.
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