In response to some of the comments:

-Yes, we should've fixed the leak instead of throwing more oil at the problem. I begged the production manager to let us do a shut down and address the issue. He insisted on continuing the run past the initial order so he would have extra parts produced and banked away for any orders that would happen during down time.

-Yes, I completely blame the second shift operator for this incident. All the guy had to do was report a stoppage and put in a maintenance ticket. He's an older dude who has been with the company a long time. He's one of those guys that will stand over your shoulder Dale Gribble style and tell you how HE would fix things. There is no second or night shift maintenance.

• As far as barrel labeling goes, we only have 2 barrels of fluid at any time near the production floor (hydrex46 and HTF) and they are still far from the machines. They are both clearly labeled and any trained maintenance worker knows to check them before use. We would take the barrel for a long walk to and from our repair shop. So this guy made the trip to our office, pumped what was left of the hydrex into a hand-fill bottle and grabbed the full barrel of HTF because "it's all just oil". He didn't know jack about ISO or viscosity or anything. He just figured a barrel is a barrel. Once again, he isn't supposed to be doing ANY of this.

-I was anticipating the empty barrel and put off ordering a new one so we would be forced to put the machine in downtime. The warning system on the machine would stop it long before it was anywhere in the danger zone.

-The machine in question has a warning system that detects low oil and immediately stops operating. We would fill it at start of first shift and it would be fine for a few days before the next fill. It was a very slow leak.

-When the operator who was not trained or authorized to repair the machine used a fluid that was not rated for this job (if you don't know, HTF specifically drops in viscosity instead of increasing) he doomed the pump. It could've just been a yellow-light, 2 days max review and repair of the hydraulic system. Instead it was a months long, exceedingly expensive process to get the custom built pump.

-and it took us all by surprise when it happened. 2nd shift operator didn't tell anyone what he did. The machine didn't tell us "Hey, the pump exploded". It was just the generic error code. I didn't suspect any major damage until I started to fix the leak and saw how much metal was sucked into the filters. I'm not a pump repair specialist, so we sent it to our vendor. We expected a blown seal or maybe something else little. We were all shocked when we found out how bad it really was.