As a young plant engineer in 1983, I remember a 230ºF (110ºC) hot water pump that repeatedly wore out mechanical seals every 10 to15 days. Each shutdown cost the company about $4,000 in lost production. The mechanics told me the pump was aligned each time they replaced the seals, but it never occurred to me that they had no instruments to align precisely and no training. This was a failure in management. Our solution was to replace the pump with a new one at an installed cost of $8,000. This solved the seal wear-out problem, and we felt good that we had saved the company from further $4,000 shutdowns to replace seals. But our ignorance was expensive. We could have aligned the pump initially in a precise manner and saved the company about $32,000 worth of grief.