Search Blogs

Refiners Delaying Maintenance, Board Chairman Says

By Leela Landress - Sep 16, 2010 (Bllomberg)

U.S. oil refiners are “compromising the mechanical integrity” of their equipment by extending maintenance cycles on their plants, the head of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said.

“We find that the refineries are doubling the time between scheduled maintenance,” Rafael Moure-Eraso, the board chairman, said today at a United Steelworkers conference in Irving, Texas. “Turnarounds that normally occur every two to three years are now happening every four or five, or longer.”

During April and May there were 13 fires, 19 deaths and 25 injuries in the oil sector, according to the United Steelworkers. Explosions in April on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico operated by BP Plc and at Tesoro Corp.’s Anacortes, Washington, refinery resulted in 18 deaths.

The board is an independent agency that investigates chemical accidents at industrial facilities.

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on Sep 19, 2010 5:41 PM EDT

Comments (0)

How steady is your ship?

Is the maintenance reliability improvement program you are leading tied into improving business results or is it aimed at keeping equipment running?

It is up to you to ensure that maintenance reliability is supporting the AIM of the business - so a great starting point may be to do some research about what the overall AIM of the company is.

I worked with a young reliability engineer who was leading a corporate reliability initiative and he assured me 100% of the plant reliability staff were aware of and aligned with the AIM of the company. I had a chance to interview this group and it turned out that only 50% even had an idea of what the AIM of the company was and almost all of them did not fully understand how the reliability initiative fit into the AIM. Remember - this was in an organization that had actively attempted to communicate the AIM and ensure alignment with this initiative.

If you are not actively in communication about AIM of the organization, you cannot expect that your maintenance reliability program is aligned in support of it.

Keep your ship upright and:

1) Be clear about the organizations AIM

2) Communicate clearly and often to your team members about this AIM

3) Design your maintenance reliability improvements to target alignment with the AIM

4) Find ways for your team to communicate this understanding back to you and others co-workers.

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on Aug 11, 2010 1:22 PM EDT

Comments (1)

Do you know what your boss really wants?

Reliabilityweb.com published an interesting article on the topic by Joel Levitt - posted here:
http://reliabilityweb.com/index.php/articles/what_do_bosses_really_want_from_the_maintenance_effort/

After reading it I wondered how many of us actually know what our bosses really want, what they really expect and if they are aware of the consequences of those choices?

Do you have written guidance on the expectations for maintenance? Or do you understand the expectations because you have been on the other side of enough emergency conversations about "what will NEVER happen here again!".

How we maintain equipment and function can make a huge difference to the organizations we deliver this service to. How many bosses have taken the time to understand the consequences and how many maintenance professionals are prepared to explain the consequences in a logical - defensible way?

Terry O

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on Jul 29, 2010 8:02 AM EDT

Comments (2)

Initiative Overload - Which Way Do I Go?

Is there a maximum number of initiatives and roadmaps that one organization can handle at one time?

Have you ever worked in an environment where it seemed like each department had multiple improvement projects being pushed all at once?

Is there an over arching methodology that would allow all improvement initiatives to be placed under one umbrella so it would be easier for everyone who worked in the company to understand the methods and goals?

Do the people pushing these separate agenda's understand the effect on the plant floor?

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on Jun 4, 2010 4:31 PM EDT

Comments (13)

Hard Work, Dedication and Eventually Reliability Transformation

I am reading the new Uptime Magazine cover article featuring SembCorp UK about their journey toward improved Reliability. It is a great story.

You can read it here if you wish

What strikes me most about this story is that technical approaches were not the leading techniques used to create results - human approaches led the way.

The great news is that this story illustrates that you do not need to purchase new EAM software, or invest in Vibration Analysis system - at least to begin your journey - you can make HUGE strides by changing the context of your program, adding leadership direction and focusing on defect elimination.

Once you start reducing system defects that reduce overall results, and get people seeing and more importantly - eliminating these defects - you can turn your Maintenance Mountain into a Maintenance Molehill - making things like Reliability Centered Maintenance analysis, Predictive Maintenance and other valuable techniques and technologies much less challenging to implement.

In all the plants I have been to it never fails that the people who are the closest to the problem - always have solutions - if they are empowered to implement them.

At Reliabilityweb.com we call this Human Asset Management and we recommend you spend as much if not more time learning about what makes people tick as you do technical solutions. Our research shows "technical solutions" implemented without human asset management fail to sustain any meaningful improvement at least 80% of the time.

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on Jun 4, 2010 11:57 AM EDT

Comments (2)

Is Reliability Equal To Safety?

My point is that if Reliability was treated EXACTLY like safety - where there is a clear policy, clear management support, clear performance metrics, clear regulation (do not get me started on enforcement here), a clear decision tree, and of course a clear path to litigation when a violation occurs - perhaps the evolution could take place faster than the 30 years we have had modern reliability techniques and methods.

What I am saying is that CEOs and Company Boards did not achieve safety out of the goodness of their hearts or from some sense of conscience. they did so out of fear of litigation. To be frank - the CEO and Company Boards are by charter - driven to maximize profit - and I am sure that early on they viewed safety compliance as a cost and a hindrance to that charter. After enough law suits the risk simply became too big to bear and like magic - safety became a standard operating context. CEOs understand TOO MUCH RISK. It became cheaper to have safety than to have violations.

If you ever had something to thank a lawyer about - that is it! (No lawyer jokes in reply please!)

I have visited and learned from hundreds of people who had made various reliability improvement journeys - and the one thing that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the have in common - is management as a barrier. It is either a barrier to achieving the performance that is possible or they are a barrier for sustaining the performance long term. The funny thing to me is that the assets we are all trying to make perform better and produce more - BELONG to the shareholders that the CEO and Board represent! They are not our assets - in fact from a shallow view - the less reliable the equipment - the more job security we have!

Shareholders currently have NO WAY to determine the devaluation of company assets based on operating and maintenance performance. They are blind as bats. It seems counterintuitive with so much investment money at stake.

Things that defeat reliability improvements are not mechanical or electrical. They are usually internal and include barriers and obstacles, competing forces, non value added work, lack of focus, lack of skills, lack of knowledge, general chaos and lack of communication. These can all be overcome - but need ongoing leadership at all levels - including the Corporate suite to succeed and sustain.

So that is why I asked added the legal to my original question.

As to the moral and ethical - the Do The Right Thing - element. I have heard it said that you can count on the CEO to do the right thing - once they have exhausted all other choices!

I am hoping that as a community - we can get them to that point sooner rather than later.

I do not expect much participation in this discussion because it is dangerous to people who are actively employed to speak up. That is fine because people speak to me off the record all the time.

I do not speak for the entire community because we are no monolithic in view or need - but I do speak for many.

Terry O

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on May 29, 2010 9:22 AM EDT

Comments (3)

Who Is In Charge Anyway?

We are just cogs in a large wheel right? We are not really empowered to make real business decisions are we?

We are simply doing what we are paid to do, doing what THEY tell us to do. THEY do know what is best - right?

Is there a place where you draw the line?

Is there something that would cause you to speak up?

Is there something that would cause you to take a stand - even if it cost you your job?

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on May 28, 2010 10:10 AM EDT

Comments (6)

Is Unreliability A Crime?

I am rereading John Moubray's article "The Case Against Streamlined Reliability Centered Maintenance" http://uptime4.me/cq7iVK and he states: "under certain circum-stances, individual managers can be sent to prison in connection with equipment failures that have sufficiently nasty consequences."

When a loss of life happens in that instance - Mr. Moubray states that United Kingdom has proposed that the laws governing involuntary manslaughter be revised to cover three new categories of crime, one of which is to be called ‘corporate killing’ which can result in life imprisonment for the managers involved.

Away from the moral violation involved, I would suggest that no job - and no manager is worth taking that kind of fall.

Do the right thing and stand up for reliability when you know it is the right thing to do.

more...

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on May 27, 2010 10:04 PM EDT

Comments (5)

< Prev

Next >

More Featured Blogs

Terry O's Transformation Train

Dilbert at Maintenance.org

Find More Blogs »