Every once in a while, I look at the search terms that brought people to our website, and I wonder if Google is playing a prank on me. Last month, the list included flsmidth brazil, george xavier flsmidth, woolly bear, the and the winter soldier, and hawk vs eagle vs. None of those phrases belong in the same sentence. But one of them—woolly bear—took me straight back to a quality audit call in March 2024.
I’m a quality compliance manager at FLSmidth. I review aftermarket parts and machines before they go to customers—roughly 200+ unique items a year. Over the past four years, I’ve rejected around 4% of first deliveries for missing serial numbers, wrong documentation, or parts that didn’t match the drawing. I don’t say that to sound tough. I say it because this is a story about the one time I almost didn’t follow my own process.
The call came on a Tuesday. One of our field service engineers in Brazil was at a cement plant in Minas Gerais. He sent a photo with the message: “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.” The photo showed a grayish-brown caterpillar stuck to the pleats of an oil filter.
The customer’s maintenance mechanic recognized it before I did. He said, “That’s a woolly bear.” And he was right. It was a woolly bear caterpillar. But knowing the caterpillar’s name didn’t help me explain why it was inside a gearbox that had been running for six weeks.
My first thought was that the gearbox seal had failed. If a caterpillar can get in, so can dirt and water. I started drafting an email about replacing the input seal and flushing the system.
Then the engineer checked the breather. On top of every FLSmidth gearbox, there is a vent cap with a mesh screen. That screen is designed to keep dust, rain, and bugs out while letting pressure equalize. The cap was not there. Not loose. Gone.
The cap was installed when that gearbox left our FLSmidth Brazil warehouse. We had a photo of it in the shipping inspection report. So it didn’t fall off during transport. The plant’s contractor had removed the cap during a reconditioning job, set it aside, and never put it back. The woolly bear crawled into the open vent, got caught in the oil flow, and ended up in the filter.
Here’s the part I’m not proud of. When the photo first arrived, I almost replied, “Not our issue—the cap was on when it left.” I thought, “What are the odds we missed something on that line?” We’ve shipped hundreds of gearboxes. The odds seemed low enough to ignore.
But “what are the odds” is how quality failures start. I pulled the trace report instead. The report showed the cap in the final photo, with the part number and the inspector’s initials. It also showed something I hadn’t asked for: the second gearbox in the same shipment had a vent cap that was only hand-tight. It would have vibrated loose on the truck. That one could have caused a real failure a few weeks later.
I delayed my reply by eleven minutes. That delay saved us from a very embarrassing conversation and possibly a second field failure.
After the woolly bear incident, we created a simple checklist for every gearbox going to a site that has an external maintenance contractor. The checklist includes a plastic zip-tie tag on the oil filler neck that says: “Reinstall breather cap after service.” The tag costs a few cents. It doesn’t upgrade the equipment. It prevents the most common way a caterpillar gets into a gearbox.
We also added a line to the service manual: “Do not operate this gearbox without the breather cap installed.” It sounds obvious. It wasn’t obvious enough.
We didn’t have a formal process for reminding customers about breather cap removal during reconditioning. There wasn’t a third time, but there was a second time waiting in that same shipment—the hand-tight cap. I finally made the checklist after the first close call, not after the third. That’s the version I want to tell.
The surprise wasn’t the missing cap. The surprise was how close we came to blaming the customer for something that was actually a procedure gap on our side. Yes, the contractor should have reinstalled the cap. But our paperwork didn’t mention it, and we assumed the cap was obvious. It wasn’t.
So glad I checked the trace report before answering. If I’d gone with my first impulse, we’d have made an enemy out of a maintenance crew and missed the loose cap on the second unit. Dodged a bullet.
When I called the customer back, I didn’t claim the gearbox was “maintenance-free” or “caterpillar-proof.” Per FTC guidelines, claims like that need to be truthful and substantiated. The truthful claim was narrow: this gearbox has a vent with a mesh screen, and it should stay installed. That’s a spec, not a slogan.
If you’ve ever opened a filter and found something you can’t explain, you know that the next few seconds are the most important. The next few seconds should include checking the obvious, then checking the not-so-obvious. The not-so-obvious was the breather cap.
The bigger lesson was about knowing what we’re good at. FLSmidth knows mining and cement equipment. We know crushers, mills, feeders, screens, gearboxes, and the automation and service that go with them. We don’t know every pest in every region, and we don’t know every contractor’s reconditioning procedure. When the customer asked if we could re-certify their contractor’s maintenance program, I said that wasn’t our lane. We can provide the gearbox, the manual, the tooling, and a service engineer on call. For re-certifying the contractor’s mechanics, the right answer was their safety department and the contractor’s training provider.
That answer did more for trust than “we’ll handle everything” ever could. The vendor who says “this isn’t our strength—here’s who does it better” earns the right to handle everything else. Replacing a breather cap is a no-brainer. The hard part is remembering why it matters.
Back to those search terms. Woolly bear isn’t a FLSmidth part number. the and the winter soldier isn’t a complete title—it’s missing “Falcon.” And hawk vs eagle vs might be about raptors—the feathered kind. If you want a Raptor cone crusher, you need to type the right Raptor. But I understood all of them. I’ve made worse typos while looking up a torque spec.
Search engines are good, but they’re not mind readers. One missing word changes a search. One missing cap changes a gearbox’s life. One missing serial number can delay an entire order. That’s why I write part numbers on everything, and why I double-check the labels that look unimportant.
Someone typed george xavier flsmidth because they remembered a name and a company but not the exact page they wanted. I get that. I also know what happens when we connect the right name to the right part: fewer emails, faster answers, better decisions. In quality, precision is not bureaucracy. It’s respect for the next person who opens the box. That’s the bottom line.
The woolly bear taught me that. It also taught me to keep a breather cap on my own checklist. Both are worth remembering.
Discuss This Topic
If this article connects to an active wear issue at your plant, use the inquiry form to continue the conversation with our advisory team.
Tell Us What Is Wearing Fastest
Share plant stage, maintenance window, and the result you want to improve so our team can respond with a practical next step.