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Introduction
For many industries planned shutdowns planning assumption. A self-perpetuating
or outages are a fact of life. Whilst such cycle often develops as a result:
shutdowns are often essential to ensure
system safety and/or regulatory “We have a shutdown every (x) year(s)
compliance, from an operational because we have so much work to do…”
perspective they are undesirable because AND/OR
they cause loss of system availability,
“We have to use the opportunity of the
incur significant planning, coordination (annual) shutdowns to do as much work
control overheads and often introduce as possible while we can….”.
system instabilities and recommissioning
problems during the start-up phase. Shutdown Interval Optimisation
at SABIC Innovative Plastics
A lot of good work has been done in the
field of shutdown planning and execution, SABIC Innovative Plastics (SABIC IP) is part
achieving reductions in direct costs and of the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation,
shutdown durations. However, the core and has four polycarbonate production
challenge facing Asset Managers is in facilities in Europe and the USA. Each site
answering the question: had an annual or bi-annual shutdown for
inspections, maintenance and engineering
When (or how often) should I shutdown projects.
in the first place?
In April 2008, following a review of
This is not an easy question to answer. possible processes and available tools, the
The key role of any Asset Manager is to management team decided to partner
optimise the costs, risks and performance with The Woodhouse Partnership Ltd
of owning and operating the assets over (TWPL) in carrying out a Shutdown
their whole life cycle – this includes Optimisation Project across the four sites,
minimising the ‘Total Business Impact’1 all with the first site being Bergen op Zoom,
expenditures, risks and performance ‘lost The Netherlands. The project received
(performance shortfall, quality losses, senior management support with a goal
downtime losses etc). With big money at of significant cost reduction and
stake, many (sometimes conflicting) performance improvement.
regulatory obligations and uncertain risks,
such goals are difficult to identify, let Shutdown Interval Optimisation
alone demonstrate in their attainment. in Bergen op Zoom
Shutdown timing or intervals, in
particular, have often become established The polycarbonate manufacturing facility
with no real strategic thought process at Bergen op Zoom is summarised in
beyond the next single occasion or a cyclic Figure 1, with the primary production
units that were the subject of the study
circled in red:
1
See www.MACROproject.org and
optimisation guidance in PAS 55-2:2008
BPA 2
Phenol
Acetone BPA 1
Brine Rec.
Utilities Power
Nat. Gas (Cogen) External sales
Steam
CO
(Air Liquide)
Pipeline
Project Methodology
The first issue addressed was to define were first evaluated individually, and then
“what constitutes a shutdown?” For this collectively, using the leading edge APT
project a shutdown was defined as: software tools for optimal timing and
‘bundling’. This methodology is shown in
“A planned event (to execute a pre- Figure 2 below:
defined asset maintenance,
inspection or engineering workscope) The first step in the process is to select,
that reduces plant output by 50% from the entire workload, only those tasks
production for a period of at least 24 which truly drive the requirement to shut
hrs (or equivalent).” down the plant. This was achieved
through a series of screening and filtering
This definition was essential in order to
processes. The selective filters ranged
filter out activities that do not really need
from a simple rule-based screening to
a major outage.
assessment and challenge by
multidisciplinary teams. The results of the
The TWPL Criticality Method was then
screening and filtering process are shown
calibrated to assess the impact and
in Table 1.
potential urgency of each task that
appeared to require a shutdown of the
plant. These were then challenged and
filtered down to a list of the truly
shutdown-dependent activities, which
All
possible Select Optimize De-
Analyse Re-optimize Optimized
tasks to Shutdown Shutdown bottleneck
Individual shutdown shutdown
be Critical bundles projects &
Critical Tasks scenarios strategy
considere Tasks of tasks actions
d
From the table it will be noted that from a process, so APT2 software tools were
total of 24,260 tasks, 7,875 were listed as employed to model the risk assumptions
‘shutdown dependent’ yet only 86 were and perform extensive “what if?” studies
actually found to be truly shutdown (given the inevitable lack of hard data).
dependent. This result showed the extent
of the shutdown cycle self-perpetuating When analysing optimal intervals we
habit described in the introduction above. needed to be able to put a value to all
direct and indirect costs. This is
Analysis of Individual Tasks particularly difficult when assigning value
The next step was to determine the to the consequences of failure, especially
optimal interval for each individual task.
This can be a complex and difficult
2
See www.decisionsupporttools.com
Net consequences
of delay
Activities forcing
short-cycle shutdown
work
BPA1-001 Acid removal collumn V510 Reduction in 24 Month re-clad within 30 replace cladding of vessel € 150
wallthickness Month
BPA2-046 Tar vent Pipe - cleaning SW 2150 Fauling lost efficiency 18 month WC at opportunity on- line / 50 % improvement € 60
before next
cleaning window
BPA2-021 Presure controll valve N2 PCV If it is too low we stop 12 month WC at opportunity Spare unit at stock €5
service to Flaker line 1, 21502120/ the system ( line 1
planned inspection 1 flaker), when the flow is
too high we spill N2
BPA2-024 Phenolic Recycle water XC Fauling lost efficiency 6 month WC At opportunity / Spare unit at stock €5
breather, service on 21107103 eliminate root
V21170, planned Cause root
inspection
Lessons Learned
When left unchallenged, shutdowns and participants to the study. The structured
their intervals become a self-fulfilling range estimating and sensitivity analysis
prophecy. Where this is the case, it is techniques were also major factors in
likely that the organisation’s business obtaining confidence and credibility in the
processes will have evolved in order to analysis results.
support the pattern, concentrating on
efficient delivery of the work rather than The credibility of the APT toolkit also
challenging its need and timing helped: in contrast to ‘decision support’
that concentrates mostly on data analysis,
Challenging the shutdown dependency of
APT was the output of the European
any task is essential, but can only be
MACRO R&D project that focussed on
successfully done by competent
quantification of cost/risk trade-off when
multidisciplinary teams and full cost/risk
data is not available. They also enabled
appraisal, with appropriate decision-
very comprehensive modelling of
support tools and robust methods for
multiple, interacting risks to determine
coping with the inevitable uncertainties
the best compromise position.
and poor information.
As with all change programmes the
participation of all stakeholders was
crucial. In particular, the safety-critical
areas of inspection and Process Safety
Management (PSM) were vital
Julie Fowler
Marketing Communications
The Woodhouse Partnership Ltd
E: Julie.fowler@twpl.com
T: + 44 (0) 1635 298800
www.sabic.com
www.twpl.com