High Reliability Organizations

Principles

Introduction:
These Principles were produced from studying and comparing information from
articles, books, internal studies, external studies and personal experience from the
past 30 years of industry experience. To create a simple and applicable set of basic
principles that can be applied to Shell Downstream Manufacturing. These are many
of the same ideas we have been using over the years and many will not be familiar.
This collection of ideas is a way to create a common language and set of ideas to use
in decision making in our day to day activities. These principles can be used at all
levels to make sure that we are making the right considerations for all areas of
performance.

Our decisions and actions are based on a set of values and principles which,
combined, define our corporate culture. It is this corporate culture that produces the
kind of performance that we will have long-term. Without changing this culture we
cannot make a sustainable step change in our performance to meet our vision of
“Maximum Availability at Optimal Cost over the Long-term”.

Case for Change:

The following statements provide a few ideas on why improving our performance is
important.

 A higher level of performance is freedom. Resources will come when a site

consistently demonstrates it will make the most of the investment. Creativity
will be more readily accepted because there is a high level of trust.
 The competition is not standing still; the pace setters are always getting better
and creating new targets. Let‟s make sure we are the pacesetters and are
always stretching ourselves to get better.
 History has shown that few are able to sustain top level performance. These
principles will provide consistency in decision making and actions to support
top level performance over the long-term.
 We need to make sure that we are continually improving the value of our
assets to ensure their place in the Shell portfolio.

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 Continuous Improvement
We are always getting better at what we do.

Regular sustainable improvement of our people, processes and equipment are the
only way we can beat the competition.

Mindsets
Don‟t be satisfied with „good‟ performance. Don‟t stop when you meet your targets,
set an even higher one.

We all should be irritated by defects and want to get rid of them. They stand in our
way of top performance.

Standardization of our work processes is the foundation for continuous improvement.

Many defects will never be known and they can line-up in ways that we cannot
foresee. We must always make decisions realizing that these defects exist and our
information is not perfect.
Ideas
Expose reality, act on it, and follow through. It‟s the only way we can make
progress.

When you see or sense something that is wasteful or not performing to its intended
level don‟t ignore it. These moments of recognition are fleeting and can easily be
normalized. Investigate the issue as far as you are capable and then ask for help.

Cultivate a sense of „chronic unease‟ that drives us to proactively identify issues and
prevent the unexpected from occurring.

Set the conditions so that relentlessly eliminating defects is part of everyone‟s day-to-
day job.

Performance and delivering results is mandatory which allows for additional

opportunities.

Do not tolerate people who continue to think “we‟re ok.” As soon as we start
believing that, our competition will pass us by.

Recognize that small signals leading to small solutions prevent big signals that lead to
big interventions.

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 Execute the Basics
Every day we deliver consistent results.

Consistent execution of the basics over the long term will lead to consistent reliability
performance and enable us to capitalize on business opportunities. The basics are
all of the day to day tasks each of us perform.
Mindsets
It is our work processes that ensure the basics are executed. We can‟t solely rely on
individual efforts.

Activities must be executed in a way that meets the intent and delivers results.

Everyone contributes to the success of the site performance.

Inefficiencies and defects in our processes are waste and must not be tolerated.

A high percentage of our incidents are caused by change activities.

Ideas
Design work processes to allow people to consistently perform their job with a high
degree of reliability.

Pacesetters do two things better than the rest – excellence in execution of the basics
and they audit themselves relentlessly.

Design and improve our work processes utilizing Lean concepts including Flow, Pull,
Workload Levelling, Standardization, and Visual Control.

Create awareness of what the basics are, clearly define them, demonstrate their
value, and standardize them so they never go away.

Recognize and reward people that do the basics well, not just the people that react
well in a crisis.

Build energy and excitement around excellence in executing the basics. Long term
consistent performance of the basics can become routine and potentially boring.
Leaders must manage the boredom that is associated with routine.

Create a partnership with the business that encourages high utilization through
reliable performance over the long term.

Undertake change activities with careful consideration and thought, recognizing that
the full risk of the change may be invisible or underestimated.

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 People Deliver Performance
We enable and empower people to work at their full capacity.
We are all here to support the front line.
Performance can only be delivered through people. This requires alignment, skills
and competencies, and a motivating environment to work in. This can happen when
the individual and the organization work together to ensure everyone can contribute
to their full potential. With this in place we can all support the front line in delivering
operational excellence on a 24/7 basis.

Mindsets
Everyone has a prevention mindset and chronic unease about the next potential
problem.

Staff and leadership do not exist to create more things for the Front Line to do. Staff
and leadership exist to create the conditions that make operators and crafts “wildly
successful!” We are in service to the front line.

Operators and crafts are the front line of production; hence they have the most direct
impact on the reliability of the facility. Nothing really happens at our sites until they
are executed by the operators and crafts. They are the eyes and ears in the plant on
a 24/7 basis and the continuity over the long-term.

Ideas
Ensure everyone can connect their role/job/activities to the performance vision.

Ensure Competency Development activities create a highly skilled workforce that

makes decisions, solves problems, and knows when to ask for help.

Ensure everyone has basic skills in Causal Reasoning and Lean Manufacturing
embedded in their day to day work.

Ensure supervisors at all levels effectively coordinate, ensure compliance, rally the
troops, coach and train, and facilitate communication that removes barriers to “doing
the right thing.”

Maximize journeys to the field, observing, listening, and intervening in all areas of
operational excellence: safety, environment, reliability, waste. Seek out the bad
news. It is the key to improvement.

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Managing the Unexpected
The following ideas provide a foundation for delivering Abnormal Situation
Management. We must develop people to Anticipate and deal with small failures
effectively and to provide Containment when the inevitable unexpected event occurs.

Anticipation

Preoccupation with Failure –

Detect the week signals and create a learning environment. Discuss a feeling when
something isn‟t right. Create a safe environment for error reporting.

Reluctance to Simplify -
Complicate your simplifications, generalizations and categorizations. The early
warning signs lie deep within the details. Differentiate mindsets and have the difficult
conversations. Create conditions for constant interaction with a multi-discipline team
that challenges each other see the environment differently.

Sensitivity to Operations -
Be responsive to the messy reality of the situation. Treat close calls as gifts to see
potential danger, not as evidence of our ability to avoid it. Repetition decreases
mindfulness, small things change each time and people need to be able to adapt.

Containment

Develop a commitment to resilience by; increasing general knowledge and technical

facility, creating the conditions for quick and accurate communications, develop a the
front-lines command over resources to relieve, moderate and reduce surprises, create
simulations of how operations can unravel and how to correct.

Defer to expertise in decision making. Push down decision making to the lowest level
in the organization. Make quick decisions by the people with the specific knowledge
of the event. Enable the ability to self-organize into ad hoc teams to provide the right
inputs to problem solving. Recognize credibility as knowing the limits of one‟s
knowledge.

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 Customer Focus
We know who are customers are and we deliver to their requirements.

Although we may not be directly linked to the end customer of the supply chain we all
still have customers. These are the people or groups that receive the work we do and
move it forward. We all have customers, but do we really know who they are and
what they need? They must always be the focus or otherwise there is no need for
producing work that no one wants.

Mindsets
You have more customers than you think. Follow the process and see who is
impacted or uses that work you produce.

Customers are also closer than you might think. Everyone who works in and around
our sites is a customer of processes to ensure safe and reliable production.

Everyone adopts a customer‟s perspective so that we can focus on their view of our
process and clearly distinguish between value added steps and non-value added
steps. We have close ties to our customers to do this.

Focus on the measurements that help us gauge our progress toward providing what
our customers care about. To accomplish this, our communications must be clear and
our data, timely.

Ideas
We must understand the problems Production faces by taking the time to “go & see”
with them. In the same manner, we can gain knowledge by working with
Maintenance on recurring repairs.

HRO priorities should be closely aligned with those of our internal customers. Our
own performance measurements should reflect that focus.

During equipment upgrades and turnarounds, we must work closely with Operations
and Maintenance to ensure we take advantage of reliability data and history in
developing the scope of effort.

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 Long Term Focus
Long term success requires a long term mindset.

Our long-term focus is most challenged when things don‟t go as expected. We must
ask the right questions to ensure we get the results we want. Ask what and why
something happened rather than how quickly we will return to the previous condition.
Mindsets
With First Quartile Availability we will expect to be at the First/Second Quartile
interface in total maintenance costs.

Moving to a long term focus may cost us more money in the short-term. We are
willing to spend this money when a strong business case is presented.

Do not be ruled by the „new initiative‟. We must all have our long-term plan and
stick to it, only adjusting when necessary.

Organizations that focus on the long-term tend to do better in the short and the long
term. Short term focus creates a risk to the future of the company.
Ideas
Be prepared to make your business case based on data and to challenge decision-
making when it is short-sighted. This is everyone‟s responsibility.

Plan for future performance improvements based on a solid understanding of the

past. We must accurately track our performance metrics, equipment history,
investigation findings, etc.

Mandate Proactive Maintenance tasks and monitoring. These tasks can be

optimized, but cannot be cut to reduce costs. Proactive activities should make up
80% of our tasks.

Consider life cycle cost analysis when making decisions in Operations, Maintenance,
Technical, Projects and Turnarounds.

As leaders, know when to “take one for the team” and make the right decision now
even if it is not what others want to hear. Results of decisions are often not felt until
years later. Leaders must behave like they will be around for the long term to see the
results of their decisions. They cannot be ruled by quarterly reports.

Have a customer focus and have a passion for wanting to find the real value adding
items for our customers.

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 Causal Reasoning
We understand what is causing our performance.

In order to achieve high reliability performance, effective application of Causal

Learning is necessary at two levels, namely to resolve the reliability problems we are
currently experiencing and to learn how to prevent the introduction of new reliability
problems in the future.

Mindsets
The performance outcomes we experience are caused. We cause both the good
outcomes and the bad, whether we like it or not. By understanding how we cause
performance problems, we can also understand how to create better performance in
the future.

Causality is positive. The performance outcomes are caused by the decisions we

make and the actions we take, not by what we did not do. The decisions we make
and the actions we take are based on what we know, not on what we don‟t know.

We spend a lot of our resources recovering from problems and taking actions that
are not corrective. That is waste. Although this action sometimes makes us feel
better, it costs money and time and does not add value to our customers.
Ideas
Resist the urge to focus on “what failed” or “who did something wrong”. We don‟t
learn from that and it does not tell us what the causes of our problems are.

Define clear guidelines for the application of Causal Learning. Provide the training
and assurance to ensure the quality of this work.

Identify more systemic causal patterns that emerge from the investigations of different
reliability problems and incidents.

Sponsor learning sessions to discover the role individuals play in the causes of
significant reliability problems.

Resist the urge to jump to the solutions of our problems, first ask what is causing
them. Only when we understand the causes can we truly solve the problems once
and for all.

Be relentless in rooting out the causes of our problems, small and large and create a
system that has fewer and fewer defects and produces desired results more and more
reliably. That is how we beat the competition.

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 Alignment
Everyone in the organization striving toward the same vision . . .
“Maximum Availability at optimal costs over the long term.”

Leaders at all levels of the organization are consistently delivering the same vision.
Individuals can internalize this vision and see their role in delivering it. People are
empowered to contribute new ideas and improve themselves to further this vision.

Mindsets
Everyone has a contribution to a reliability-led strategy.

A reliability-led strategy gets you everything – improved safety and environmental

performance, higher availability, and lower costs.

All levels of the organization can see misalignment at the leadership team level. This
misalignment grows exponentially as you go deeper in the organization.
Ideas
Identify the critical few priorities and keep them, turn off work that adds less value. Choose
the strategies that everyone can contribute in delivering and help them see their part.

“Go and see:” engage the Front Line with the vision and communicate how their daily
activities support it. Do more listening than talking.

Listen for the blockers to the front line meeting expectations and remove them.

“Walk the talk” or risk creating considerable confusion, misalignment, and mistrust among
employees.

Ensure everyone is clear on their role in the organization and is challenged to work at their
full potential.

Start and end conversations with the vision. If we believe in Continuous Improvement
then our organization is in a state of constant change. Successful change requires a
constant communication of the vision.

Alignment can produce amazing results. Fully harness alignment of common goals in
day to day operation just like during recovery efforts after hurricanes or incidents.

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 Assurance
Resources are in place to keep the organization on the right track.

All individuals have an assurance role to play. Many of our assurance activities are
executed at the front-line as part of an individual‟s role. As our organisation
matures we rely less and less on external assurance.

Mindsets
Provide focused expert resources that can manage the work process and who
function as an assurance focal point for activities.

Optimize Reliability, Energy, Margin and Yield in design and technical assurance for
long-term performance. These roles carry a high degree of chronic unease to prevent
unintended consequences of change.
Ideas
Welcome external reviews to ensure we have the proper perspective on our
performance. Spend time going and seeing what others are doing and how we can
learn from them.

Bring in internal and external best practices to the site. Charge assurance roles with
conducting technical analysis of sufficient depth and quality to make the proper
business decisions,

Conduct analysis that provides both leading and lagging indicators in order to
sustain the long term reliability performance we strive to achieve.

As leaders, provide the space and time required for analysis to take place.

Recognize that without the roles and resources dedicated to Assurance in place at the
site, regional and global levels, our focus will deteriorate and so will our
performance.

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Values – Support the HRO Principles

“Shell employees share a set of core values - honesty, integrity and respect for
people. We also firmly believe in the fundamental importance of trust, openness,
teamwork and professionalism, and pride in what we do.” From „Shell General
Business Principles”
Honesty & Integrity
 Leaders must be trustworthy for employees to follow.
Respect for People
 The successes of our colleagues are just as important as our own. We must see
improvement and success as a collective effort. Individual success is closely linked
to company success. To support such an environment we must each be ready to
accept and receive feedback from each other.
 Unlocking everyone‟s potential is a fundamental driver of our long term business
success.
Trust
 We must trust each other to work in everyone‟s best interest and working with the
right intent.
 It is expected that all employees can challenge and question decisions with
sound data.
Openness – learning from each other
 This is an inherently risky business, so everyone must act accordingly.
Honest mistakes are OK. Negligence and complacency are not. We can‟t
have people working here who don‟t believe this.
Teamwork – working together with humility
 The competition is outside, not inside of Shell. When we effectively work together
we increase our chances for success in solving problems and making
improvements.
 Asking for help from individuals, other sites, or external sources is seen as
strength. We know our gaps and actively seek Best Practice‟s from others and
create pull for new ideas.
Professionalism – wanting it right every time
 When we see something that doesn‟t look right we should be curious to see what
is going on.
 We must be data driven in our decision making.
Pride in what we do – empowered employees
 Unexpected failures are simply not accepted and are worked out of the
system quickly.
 Enable the front line workers and staff to identify and address the
problems before they get big, leadership must be ready to support them.

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