Where has summer gone?! It is time for a new installment of Walk in My Shoes. Yes, those boots are made for walking and working - please welcome Scott Dercks, Process Line Manager for Thilmany Papers in downtown De Pere, Wisconsin. If you've ever been to De Pere, you've seen the Thilmany Papers mill. I'd often thought of it as the "Wllie Wonka Chocolate Factory" since I see evidence of it operating, but it all seems a bit mysterious to me! Scott now gives us a glimpse of what it is like to spend a day there "Walking in My Shoes" ...
The Thilmany Papers Nicolet Mill has been a downtown fixture to the De Pere community for more than 100 years. Since its foundation in 1892, Thilmany Papers has become a paper mill with a High Performance Work Team of just more than 200 employees, the Nicolet Millis an OSHA VPP Star Site and has been since 1995, is ISO 9001:2008 Certified, and has adopted Lean Six Sigma tools.
Its valuable team members, such as Paper Machine Process Line Manager, Scott Dercks, who continue to make the Thilmany Papers Nicolet Mill a successful business in downtown De Pere.
I'm the Process Line Manager for Nicolet's #4 Paper Machine. My position entails working with all crews on the #4 process line to ensure all team members are working safely and meeting our quality and production goals. On a daily basis, I work with crews and our maintenance employees on continuous improvement ideas/projects to improve overall performance. I also work with our maintenance department on outage/downtime planning and execution.
However, my position remains diverse and I wear multiple hats, shifting thought from the day-to-day production world, to the marketing and product development world where I meet with marketing teams to brainstorm development on producing new products for customers (which is very interesting). I also get to work with our sales team serving as a a technical resource for our customers. A typical day is a 10 to 12 hour one, with very little downtime!
Every day is challenging. How? A challenging day is to attend various meetings during the day at the mill, having to meet with customer at their facility or on conference call, and between meetings/customers still trying to troubleshoot issues that occurring on one of the machines.
Managing my process line to make sure we are running at or above our goals contributes to the company's final earnings and ultimately helps make this mill be successful. The people here definitely make my job fun! Not always knowing what I am going to walk into everyday, troubleshooting any issues or looking for ways to make improvements, and working with such a great group of people makes me enjoy my job.
