Organizational factors can be important. It would be nice if these were documented, but a drop-in consultant or auditor might not be able to determine the reasons. I'd guess that many maintenance managers are not sufficiently connected with the controllership or demand planning to necessarily realize what is driving their maintenance opportunities. Here are some that I've seen in play beyond the technical needs of the machinery:
- The turnaround is paid for by the Opex budget, which was set a year and a half ago in 10 minutes on a Thursday at 5:20 pm when the controller was trying to leave for the day. Once budgeted, you live with it...then it gets cut further as you get near execution.
- Production campaigns and end-of-year or end-of-quarter inventory management. You can "live off" the contents of the warehouse for a few weeks, lock in your inventory for tax & insurance and get a better closing value for both. Meanwhile, maintenance gets the plant, but it's a side benefit and not related to the actual required PM frequency.
- Work package size and work capacity: if you wait too long, you generate more work. At some point, this becomes too large for your regular organization to manage (i.e. plan the work, manage parts packaging, issue work permits for as many work sites, and supervise the work with a limited number of qualified people.) A longer, infrequent turnaround is more difficult to budget for, so some people prefer frequent, small opportunities. They are easier to budget and manage.
- Contractor availability, especially for key skills like breaker testing and on-site PSV repair during turnaround season.
NFPA 70B (Std for Electrical Equipment Maintenance) is a very powerful document, equal in authority to NFPA 70 (National Electrical Code) and NFPA 70E (Safety & Arc Flash). It directly addresses changing PM frequency based on conditions of service and prior inspection results, repairs, infrared findings, incidents, etc. So if you think you're electrically safe but haven't read 70B and made some changes...please read it free online, then buy a copy.
People often want to extend the time between turnarounds. To put some limits on this, I did some work in measuring local PSV repair frequency under API and ASM to show that more cycle extensions weren't technically justified. I did the same thing for the electrical distribution system using NFPA 70B. We made these lessons learned in a few near-miss incident reports. Then I "conspired" with the HSE manager to modify some of the wording of the HSE SOPs regarding critical maintenance...presto, now I had a paper trail that was a big impediment to extending turnaround cycle times and required an MOC for each breaker or PSV anyone wanted to extend.
Startups Errors:
If the plant in question is run continuously, it will be bad at being able to shutdown and startup without incident or quality losses. If the same plant changes the operating profile from continuous to block operation with frequent startups, the incidents and quality losses will get worse at first. Eventually, the organization will learn and improve. How fast this happens depends on how much of an adaptive learning organization you have. Keys are active supervision and the ability to self-evaluate and incorporate lessons learned into operating documents. I've seen this happen several times.
OEM Frequencies
I had repeated disagreements with HSE about how OEM PM frequencies were nice initial suggestions but weren't RAGAGEP requirements for PSM. They understood OEM frequencies as hard requirements. I tried to convince them that codes allowed changing PM frequencies when supported by evidence using a formal evaluation process...which in my mind could be as simple as having the maintenance planner look at the work order history, no big committees needed. I think they sometimes believed me a little bit...but just taking the OEM number is quite easy.
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Karl Burnett
General Electric
Anderson SC
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-12-2022 12:52 PM
From: Boykie Sebobi
Subject: Plant Turnaround Strategy
Hello everyone!
At one time or another during my career as maintenance superintendent, I have worked for an employer or two (minerals treatment plant) where plant turnarounds or maintenance outages were scheduled every month! Although I was never able to establish the real reason behind this, it appeared to be out of compliance to operational policy rather than maintenance necessity. There were delays on each start-up occasion and this caused major problems!
Even if it's shutting down a different part of the plant at a time, the time intervals seemed irrational?
Please share your thoughts, some light, and or advice.
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Boykie Sebobi CEng, CMRP
Principal Consultant
AssetSure
Gaborone
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