#1615 - Maintenance Practices for Improved Plant Profits

Course Objective

In today’s environment, process plants are interested in increasing profitability by improving reliability and achieving maintenance excellence. To attain these ends, new approaches and tools are being used. The purpose of this course is to introduce a model for improving maintenance effectiveness and increasing plant reliability. In addition to a framework, a review of some maintenance techniques and tools will be included.

Who Should Attend?

Supervisors and Managers assigned responsibility for maintenance cost and unit reliability. Atendees should have an understanding of their plant’s current performance and opportunities for improvement.

Course Description

This course is divided into three main sections, as described below.

Day 1

This session introduces the concepts of maintenance excellence and the perspective of what is happening in the maintenance world today. A framework for achieving World Class Maintenance will be presented, including a discussion of some of the best practices for achieving excellence in maintenance. The session will end with a discussion of how equipment fails and what impact maintenance has on failure.

Introduction: An overview of the course will be presented and attendee expectations elicited. Also, what is happening in maintenance today will be reviewed. A discussion will be held with attendees to understand their maintenance organization and their strengths and areas for improvement.
What Is Maintenance: Different types of maintenance and the effect they have on equipment reliability will be reviewed: how equipment fails and what influence maintenance has on equipment failure. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) will be introduced, including the tasks plant personnel can undertake. A review of different maintenance organizations will be included.
Maintenance Excellence: A framework for a World Class Maintenance Organization will be presented which will include guiding principles, key elements, Best Practices, and a process for changing a maintenance organization. Attendees will have an opportunity to score their organization against the framework.
Equipment Failure Patterns: How equipment fails and the “bath-tub” curve will be reviewed. Also, how to prevent equipment failures and what effect maintenance has on equipment failure will be presented. Attendees will be asked to discuss how their equipment fails and if it matches traditional patterns.

Day 2

This session introduces a model for achieving excellence in maintenance with a review of each model component. Such areas as overall philosophy, risk based decisionmaking and work scope justification will be discussed. Metrics will be introduced for stewarding performance and activities needed for continuous improvement.

Maintenance Management Model: A model for conducting plant maintenance willbe presented. The model is based on a proven model that has been successfully used to achieve maintenance excellence. This module establishes the basis for the subsequent modules that will explain the various model elements in more detail. Discussion will follow where attendees will discuss their plant maintenance model.
Maintenance Objective Setting: This module will present the various business plans needed for an effective maintenance organization, including examples. Attendees will have an opportunity to discuss the policies and plans their organizations have in place.
Work Selection: Procedures for screening work requests and how work should be prioritized will be discussed. Risk-based decision-making will be included, integrating different risk matrices. Also cost benefit analysis will be reviewed and how it can be used to prioritize work.
Work Planning and Scheduling: The roles and responsibilities of planners and schedulers are presented, plus the procedures for performing both activities. The discussion will include the staffing and criteria for effective planning and what should be included in an effective work plan. Also included will be some metrics for assessing planning.
Work Execution: Different contracting approaches are presented along with the objectives of work execution. An example roles and responsibilities list for supervisors is included.
Stewardship: This section covers the activities normally employed to ensure maintenance objectives are achieved. Performance metrics are also reviewed with target values for business, system and functional indicators.
Continuous R&M Improvement: Activities to improve reliability performance are reviewed including several techniques for performing failure analysis. When to do and when not to do a failure analysis is discussed.

Day 3

This session introduces a number of techniques and tools for maintenance improvement. Specific tools that will be discussed are Reliability Centered Maintenance, Life Cycle Cost Analysis, and various monitoring techniques. Human reliability and its influence on plant operability will be reviewed.

Life Cycle Cost Analysis: What LCCA is and the methodology for applying the technique will be discussed. The time value of money and the timing for applying LCCA will be presented. An example is included.
Reliability Centered Maintenance: An introduction to RCM, including the history, benefits, and procedure for performing an RCM analysis will be presented. As part of the presentation, an example is included to help attendees understand the work process. The module ends with a discussion on how to implement the process.
Monitoring Techniques: Two monitoring approaches that can be used to improve equipment performance will be reviewed: condition-based techniques and analytical tools. Various condition-based tools are discussed and the approaches for analyzing equipment failure data are reviewed.
Human Reliability: The cost of human reliability on a plant is presented and the characteristics of what cause human unreliability. The emphasis is that human reliability cannot be forgotten and must be considered in the design and engineering of a plant and day-to-day operation.
Wrap-up: A review of the expectations elicited at the initial session will be reviewed and any follow-up to clarify the material presented.

Note:

Most of the modules will include discussion on what is happening at the attendees’ plants and how their operations compare to the material presented. Also, some exercises will be included.