Comments on: Why does your plant run better when you’re not there?

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:23:30 +0000

Theres lots of support for the holiday effect in the oil industry, so much so that some Operating companies modify their working day behaviours eg any meetinf with site personnel held at ends of shift or adjacent to lunchtime, same windows for routine phone calls etc.

Tor’s point on meetings is supported by exeprience. Alcoa presented even quantified how much more effective planning made things in an NPRA paper some time ago.

Muhammad’s point is also well made. Interventions cause problems, making better use of predictive or detective methods reduces failure rates because it reduced interventions so there’s less revisit work. Even the most motivated, experienced and skilled staff using clear well written proceduces can introduce defects. I’m sure there’s enough people whose expereince bears this out in plants where the procedures are less good, or staff have less experiences, fewer skills or are less motivated.

Planning and prep, releagte transactional work (phone calls, email, meeting) to set windows, check the health og equipment using human senses, the process & operating parameters and conditon monitoring gadgets as appropriate so you avoid openining up equipment when possible.

By: Muhammad

Muhammad — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:27:47 +0000

Human intervention is one of the reason of introducing failure modes into the system. Since humans have a tendency to do things wrongly, therefore there are fair chances of failures and problems occuring due to human interventions. All planned Maintenance activities carried out during the day on work days.
Also, our plants are usually not having very good visual workplace indicators / operator procedures checklists, therefore chances of plant operator mistakes are more.

By: Tor Idhammar

Tor Idhammar — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:26:04 +0000

John, Greg, Martin,

thanks for your comments. Martin, not a bad idea to work on basic meetings. I bet you could save a bundle of hour in your mill by just having:

1. Start on-tim (on the second)
2. Have clear preparation wok for each person attending
3. Follow the agenda and not allow any side tracks

For example, a daily planning and scheduling meeting that takes more than 15 minutes is usually not run well.

A generic meeting book i like is “Meetings that work!” by Chang & Kehoe. I think it is $19.95 on Amazon.

Tor

By: Martin Crane

Martin Crane — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:20:58 +0000

Perhaps I should take more vacation time and we’ll run better, not a bad deal… ;). Just kidding, i think you are right, but trial runs etc has to be done as you know. But all our disruptive meetings could probably be done more efficient.

By: Greg Weisman

Greg Weisman — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:30:45 +0000

We ran like clockwork over Christmas and New Years! Perhaps we shopuld look at what we did during those days.

Greg

By: John Sagraves

John Sagraves — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:41:59 +0000

So true Tor!!!!

When management is on site it is hard for the crew to focus on doing maintenance, we are too busy with meetings and trial runs, etc. We could save A LOT of time and money in our plant with some basic planning and scheduling. I will call you to discuss!!!