Michael “Mike” Harlan
Results-driven Chemical Engineer in specialty chemical manufacturing in Louisville, KY. Plant Operations Manager at a leading producer of industrial adhesives, coatings, and performance chemicals. Oversee all aspects of plant operations, including raw material blending, bulk storage systems, quality-controlled packaging into drums, totes, tanker trucks, and railcar loading. Responsible for optimizing production schedules, ensuring regulatory compliance with EPA, OSHA, and DOT standards, and maintaining the safe, efficient transfer of hazardous and non-hazardous materials. Under my leadership, the Louisville facility has achieved a 22% increase in on-time shipments while reducing packaging-related incidents by 35%. I enjoy leading cross-functional teams of operators, technicians, and maintenance staff to solve complex operational challenges in a fast-paced 24/7 environment. Committed to continuous improvement, actively promoting Lean manufacturing principles and sustainable practices, including waste minimization and energy-efficient blending processes.
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Professional Background
14 years
PE, Six Sigma Black Belt, PSM & HAZOPER
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Technical Interests & Expertise
Streamlining packaging machinery
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At our Louisville plant we recently revamped a Class I, Div 1 drum line for flammable blends. We swapped floor scales and manual valves for Coriolis-based, bottom-up semi-auto fillers with a two-stage profile, nitrogen blanket, and bonded/grounded swivels. Result: cycle time per 55-gal dropped 21% (73s to 58s), giveaway fell from 0.15% to 0.08%, and vapor exposure is noticeably lower because we stay closed until bung torque.Not all roses: entrained air on solvent returns confused the meters unti...
We’ve been tightening up VOC control on our solvent drum/tote lines. We moved from open bung filling to closed-loop heads with vapor return to a header tied into a carbon bed. Emissions dropped and the room smells better, but we ran into backpressure swings that slowed fills and created occasional drips at disconnect. We stabilized it with a backpressure regulator on the header, pressure transmitters at the fill skids, and a short pause before decoupling to let the return equalize. Throughput is...
As a specialty chemicals plant feeding downstream petrochem customers, we’ve spent the last year tightening up our Class I drum and tote packaging. The true constraint wasn’t nozzle speed. It was foaming, temperature-driven density swings, and sloppy changeovers that created leaks and rework.Three changes gave us the biggest lift: swapping to Coriolis mass-based fills with simple backpressure control to stabilize against vapor, switching from AODD to VFD-driven gear pumps to kill pulsation, and...
In the last year we overhauled our drum/tote and tank-truck loading for aromatics and ketones. Targets: cut VOCs, speed changeovers, and eliminate handoffs that led to small spills.Changes we made: enclosed fills with hard-piped vapor return to carbon control; switched from PD/volumetric to Coriolis with batch presets; dry-breaks on all transfer points; ground verification interlocked to permissives; independent high-level and rapid-closure valves; standardized hose sets and color coding; added...
In adhesives and coatings we often straddle petrochemicals. We just scaled up drum and tote packaging for a low-flash solventborne product, and the tug of war between throughput and NFPA/API expectations was real. Our two biggest pain points were static control and vapor management at the fillers.Bonding and grounding were solid, yet we still had nuisance LEL trips on warm afternoons. Root cause: the supplier’s solvent blend drifted 3-4 C in flash point from the SDS. Fixes that stuck: require CO...
We just finished retrofitting our drum and tote lines for Class I liquids with closed fill lances, vapor balance to carbon, verified grounding, continuous LEL, and automated torque and leak checks. Emissions are down and our operators feel safer. The tradeoff is a slower takt time. We added 9 to 12 seconds per container and get nuisance trips around 6 to 8 percent LEL on humid days.We have chipped away at it with a few changes. Bottom entry lances and a two stage fill profile reduced splashing....
In our solvent lines, the last 100 feet are where schedule and safety collide. We were choking on tote changeovers and near-miss alarms at the truck rack, even though upstream blending was fine. The fixes turned out to be small, cheap, and very repeatable.We standardized camlock types and gasket kits, color-coded hose sets by product family, and added positive ID tags to every connection. Swapping mechanical meters for Coriolis with preset batches tied to rack permissives cut overfills and rewor...
At our Louisville plant, the biggest gains in flammable packaging did not come from bigger pumps. They came from tighter control and better vapor handling. Overfills and foaming were our chronic pain.We moved from timed or volumetric fills to two-stage by weight on load cells, with a VFD pump and a fast/slow valve. A Coriolis meter rides along for diagnostics, but density swings with 10 to 15 F tank temperature changes made straight mass targets unreliable. Hardwired interlocks to ground verific...
In our world, the packaging line is often the true bottleneck, not the reactors. This past year we converted two drum/tote lines to closed-loop gravimetric filling with vapor recovery, automated bung torque, and barcode recipe control. Results: faster changeovers, tighter fill accuracy, and fewer drips and VOCs. We also cut mislabels because the PLC won’t arm the fill unless product, container, and label match.Biggest gains weren’t flashy: grounding/bonding permissives tied to the scale, nozzles...
We just finished a Kaizen around our solvent packaging cells that might be relevant to folks in petrochem. Biggest wins came from three low-tech moves: converting from top-fill wands to bottom-fill lances with nitrogen blanketing, adding close-coupled quick-connect manifolds with color-coded spools, and installing piggable headers on our high-turn lines. Result: 28% less flush solvent, faster line purges, and visibly lower fugitive emissions in the bay.We paired this with Coriolis mass flow mete...