Ensuring refinery reliability takes a holistic approach

To achieve the highest return on investment, the goal is to extract as much margin as possible from an asset, which means being able to run your refinery at the rate of demand needed to make the highest margin products. This requires identifying the areas where you’re missing opportunities and losing money, and then taking action.

Companies performing in the Top Quartile are doing just that. By generating dramatic asset performance gains of more than 400 hours of operations per year, they gain two additional weeks of productivity, allowing them to capture more margin opportunities that go right to the bottom line.

But to realize these benefits, refiners should take a holistic approach to reliability, beginning with a top down vision rather than taking a reactive maintenance approach, while at the same time, empowering their personnel to affect real change at the most tactical, fundamental levels.

                  Plants performing below the Top
                  Quartile will often see 2 to 14
                  percent more downtime.

Start by assessing common problems
Perform an assessment of the three most common problem indicators—unplanned downtime, overstocked spare parts, and stranded technology—to find opportunities to optimize asset performance. From there, you can then develop a roadmap and cultivate the organizational cultural shifts necessary to improve reliability, and ultimately, production. Making this journey is well worth the effort. Those performing below the Top Quartile will often see 2 to 14 percent more downtime, according to a recent Solomon reliability and maintenance study. The study also indicates that poor performers can spend two to four times more on maintenance costs than Top Quartile performers.

These percentages add up to serious money. A 250 thousand BPD, lower quartile refinery, for instance, spends an average of $10 to $30 million per year more on maintenance than a Top Quartile refinery.

That is a lot of profit left on the table. In refineries that rely on preventive and reactive maintenance, as much as 60 percent of maintenance labor is unproductive or unnecessary. Underutilization of data from process sensors and equipment monitoring technology and over investment in spare parts are also areas that can be improved to free cash flow for more strategic purposes. By benchmarking plant operations against peers, companies can identify which of the three major issues presents the biggest opportunity for financial gain and how they can devise strategies that drive improvement across all three.

Utilize data to fix asset issues early
Many plants have incorporated smart technologies to manage the production process, along with devices capable of indicating equipment failure that leads to downtime. Companies have also spent substantial money on protection systems to shut down machines, vastly reducing the possibility of catastrophic failure and long downtimes. What if these same tools could provide even earlier notice of developing problems?

They can. Often, multimillion-dollar investments in process management and condition monitoring systems include capabilities for detecting failures that are not being used. More information can be extracted from these investments to identify the cause of failures and fix equipment earlier and plan repairs at times when the output of an asset is least valuable. Even more importantly, this information can be used to evaluate when continuing operation of an asset could pose a safety risk.

Equipment condition information can be leveraged to remedy all three problem indicators. By better understanding when a problem might arise, a refinery can stock only those parts needed when a situation requires action, freeing capital for more productive uses. Unplanned downtime can also be dramatically reduced, since you will see failures well in advance, opening many more opportunities for improving margins. In addition, the ability to plan and perform repairs only when needed can allow staff to shift from reactive and periodic maintenance to more productive activities.

 Changing the mindset, one step at a time
Still dubious about the gains that can be achieved by taking actions to recap these excessive expenditures? While it’s important to set the right tone for improved reliability at the top of your organization, it’s equally imperative to empower your staff to start small by identifying the root cause of issues at a single plant or unit.

This means embracing the notion that big changes often come from a series of small changes over time. By creating a work environment that welcomes seemingly small process-related improvements and fosters better work habits, over time you’ll see dramatic, reinforcing impacts down the line. The organization can then measure the effectiveness of the actions taken to validate the improvements, and benchmark those results against peers. And once assured of the benefits, they can confidently extend those process improvements to other areas of the refinery.

By taking a holistic approach to reliability and a tactical, step-by-step approach to empowering your staff to be good stewards of that approach, you’ll see considerable financial benefit for your refinery. A measured data-based approach which can reveal when an asset is going to break or fail, will not only decrease maintenance costs and increase profits because you will be producing more, it will also make your refinery safer for your people.

And that’s good news because otherwise no one in a large company could ever make a difference. There are many examples where one person started a major change in company dynamics from a seemingly small initiative. Seen in this light, reliability is all about taking that small step, no matter how seemingly tactical or even insignificant, toward broader, systematic reliability goals. And when the big ideas work in concert with the smaller, continuous changes, it’s a winning combination.