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Project Optimization of Plant Stoppages

Luis Amendola, Ph.D
Industrial Engineering Management

Through the coordination of major maintenance scheduled stoppages at

petrochemical and refinery plants and the exchange of information and
comments of people from all levels in the organization, I decided to compile the
contents of this article. I wish it will be useful for all participants in this kind of
projects. It may be of use not only to those in refineries or petrochemical plants,
but for manufacturing facilities as well.

Recent studies from international organizations show a huge gap between the
cost of these stoppages in Latin America and the same at world level. A great
deal of these differences can be identified as maintenance execution costs and
duration of stoppages. These are variable depending on:

™ Importance and complexity of work to be performed

™ Application of best practices and reliability methodologies

When we plan and schedule these major maintenance projects we must make
some considerations of additional factors such as:

™ Operational reliability
™ Maintainability
™ Availability

That is we should have the answers to questions like:

™ What activities will have to take place during stoppage and how
can we optimize time and cost of the execution?
™ What activities are not required?
™ What activities can be done routinely and at which point in the
process of the plant?
™ What activities can be performed during the next stoppage?

To this regard I suggest we analyze the following methodology:

Work Methodology
Conform a "natural" work team comprised of people from:

Maintenance, Operations, Materials, Industrial Safety, Process Engineering,

Human Resources, Services and Finance Departments.

Luis Amendola is the professor of Department of Projects Engineering, Polytechnic University of

Valencia Spain, has over 20 years of experience in the petroleum, gas and petrochemical industry. He
has carried out technical positions and management engineering projects, maintenance and business
development in international company, PMI membership # 292303. E-mail: luiam@dpi.upv.es,
luigipmm@ono.com.
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This has the purpose of evaluating the achievement expected from the
maintenance jobs to be performed during the stoppage as well as to identify
optimization opportunities.- Just as all these improvement activities, this one
has to receive strong support from top management in the company. We will be
able to listen to each participant and learn in advance what can or cant be
expected.

In the above diagram are the steps I propose for the Natural Work Team

Application of Reliability Techniques.

The application of operational reliability techniques in the maintenance

management at industrial facilities optimizes the achievements of maintenance
representing substantial savings. Among others, the advantages of these
techniques will:

Luis Amendola is the professor of Department of Projects Engineering, Polytechnic University of

Valencia Spain, has over 20 years of experience in the petroleum, gas and petrochemical industry. He
has carried out technical positions and management engineering projects, maintenance and business
development in international company, PMI membership # 292303. E-mail: luiam@dpi.upv.es,
luigipmm@ono.com.
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™ Eliminate or diminish subjectivity and uncertainty usually attached

to most decisions that must be made. This will prevent
overestimations that are common place in such projects.
™ Root causes and occurrence probabilities of each problem will be
analyzed in advance and the operational consequences as well as
safety issues.

In other words, there is a clear awareness of the risks of each decision and this
allows the team to think about improving the maintenance operation reducing
therefore undesirable consequences.

Let us see some of those reliability techniques being utilized by large

corporations with excellent results:

Cost - Risk Optimization (CRO)

Continual limitations in cash flow in refineries and petrochemical plants make it
mandatory to justify whatever expense and labor to be utilized in a planned
plant stoppage. That means we must make sure there will be investment
returns (savings or extra revenue), very clearly associated to the project. The
losses related to opportunities and production missed during the stoppage
should also be considered. In other words: The profit derived of the project has
to be clearly seen.

These are the questions that should find an answer:

™ Is there a profit if we go ahead with this project?

™ Is the investment (parts, materials, labor), justified by the profit?
™ What will the return rate be?

Risk Based Investment (RBI)

This methodology provides the basic tools and administers risk as the measure
to define the inspection programming, so that each piece of equipment is
catalogued and hierarchically scheduled according to the risk its failure may
represent. Once the risk associated to each piece of equipment is clearly
determined, this can be diminished and/or controlled through different methods
such as: optimization of type and frequency of inspection.

“Reliability, Availability y Maintenability” (RAM)

The RAM technique was developed by Sun Oil in order to optimize their plant
stoppages. It is about deciding if given the reliability, availability and
maintainability of the equipment, it should be scheduled to be maintyained
during a certain stoppage or not. They compare the evaluation to the option of
"doing nothing". Whatever decision is more cost effective, it will be made.
Luis Amendola is the professor of Department of Projects Engineering, Polytechnic University of
Valencia Spain, has over 20 years of experience in the petroleum, gas and petrochemical industry. He
has carried out technical positions and management engineering projects, maintenance and business
development in international company, PMI membership # 292303. E-mail: luiam@dpi.upv.es,
luigipmm@ono.com.
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“Asset Performance Tools” (APT inspection)

Another methodology also applied in search for opportunities to improve or
optimize plant stoppages has traditionally been the APT Inspection. Again, the
idea is to evaluate or determine if the task should take place during the
stoppage. If it is timely according to the machine's appropriate interval between
inspections and considering cost-benefit-risk of alternative inspection strategies.
Also a balance has to be made about the reliability, performance, unavailability
and impact of that piece of equipment.

This analysis is one of the most powerful tools currently available to generate
the criteria that will back any decisions on inspection of lines and static
machines or devices.

• The scope must be taken as the objective of each step in the

development of the stoppage, since the opportunities to improve or
change the process will vary each time.
• To determine the reach of the project, the analysis procedures and
reliability techniques will be combined to evaluate the convenience of
performing the maintenance task.
• The effective and opportune participation of the team as a whole is key to
reach the goal of optimal accomplishment.

Recommendations

This is a methodology based on the application of the best practices and

reliability techniques. It will allow the plant to have considerable savings and
establish a structured planning process to achieve optimal results out of
scheduled stoppages. On the other hand, there will also be some other benefits
as the extension, intensity and number of tasks to be performed will translate
into a higher availability of the plant.

References and Bibliography

9 J. Kum, A. Windmüller, A. Ricter (Intevep), INT-6991, 1999.

Recomendaciones para optimización de paradas de planta.
1999.
9 S. Gupta, J. Paisie. Turnaround scope development through
RAM analysis. NPRA Conference. 1997.
9 J. Woodhouse. Optimización costo riesgo de mantenimiento. The
Woodhouse Partnership. 2000.

Luis Amendola is the professor of Department of Projects Engineering, Polytechnic University of

Valencia Spain, has over 20 years of experience in the petroleum, gas and petrochemical industry. He
has carried out technical positions and management engineering projects, maintenance and business
development in international company, PMI membership # 292303. E-mail: luiam@dpi.upv.es,
luigipmm@ono.com.