Case Studies in Maintenance and Reliability: A Wealth of Best Practices. V. Narayan
short period before the events described in this book, a refrigerated liquefied petroleum gas storage and export facility had been constructed and added to the refinery assets. As the country has very high literacy, the refinery had a well-educated work force. Traditionally, the population is highly skilled in crafts and people are proud of their handiwork. The value system also includes respect for elders, obedience to authority, and help and support to one another within the community.
2.2.5 Facility: A Regional Oil Company Operating Refineries and Downstream Operations
The company operated four refineries located in various parts of the country as well as a national marketing network. All refineries processed imported crude oil. The refineries ranged from medium–sized, semi-complex to large complex units. Between them, they had a full range of petroleum refining process plants, with sophisticated, state-of-the-art process control systems. Although the region was technologically very advanced, they did not apply sophisticated computerized methods to refinery maintenance. The refineries functioned with very hierarchical organizations in which communication was strictly via the official chain of command.
2.3 Locations in Europe
2.3.1 Facility: A Large Petroleum Refinery
This very large refinery was located on the coast. It was a ‘swing’ refinery, processing several types of crude oil. Because it had many process plants, there were a number of plant shutdowns every year. In this facility, they did a number of things very well, and others learned from them. Staff were disciplined and generally performed competently. Their technical knowledge base was excellent, but typical large facility silos had developed, leading to indifferent business performance. In benchmarking studies, they came out about average.
The refinery was located in an industrial belt, along with a number of other large chemical plants, refineries, and manufacturing facilities. All the companies used contractors extensively for shutdown work. Most of the shutdowns were scheduled in the April-October period, avoiding the cold weather as far as possible. Contractor manpower requirements peaked significantly during these periods. Inter-company agreements were in place to minimize bunching, which could result in dilution of skills.
2.3.2 Facility: Large Oil and Gas Production Company
The company carried out Exploration and Production (E&P) of hydrocarbon oil and gas. It was one of many companies in a large multi-national oil and gas group of companies.
The facility had several offshore oil and gas reservoirs. Some of these were exploited from fixed Platforms, others from Floating Production Storage and Offloading facilities (FPSOs). There were also a number of sub-sea installations feeding Platforms or FPSOs.
The company was innovative and used leading edge technology. It provided skilled staff on loan to other companies in the group.
It suffered from some of the large company problems. These included working in silos, optimizing things to benefit the department rather than the overall business, and slow speed of decision making.
2.3.3 Facility: Corporate Technical Headquarters
This facility was the technical headquarters of a very large multi-national oil and gas group of companies. From these offices, the corporate staff provided technical support to a large number of exploration and production facilities, refineries, gas plants, and chemical plants located around the world. A small maintenance and reliability team provided a benchmarking and consultancy service to the refineries and gas plants. The team identified maintenance best practices for sharing within the group to promote increased profitability and plant availability. They used written guidelines, newsletters, training courses, workshops, and conference events to transfer knowledge between locations. The three authors were founding members of a reliability improvement team, which worked with sites to promote performance improvements. This process proved to be very successful.
2.3.4 Facility: A Small Complex Oil Refinery
This was a small, rather aging asset onto which was being grafted some modern world-scale plants for product upgrading. It had the usual refinery plants of atmospheric and vacuum crude distillation and lubes along with thermal gas oil, reformer, hydro-cracker, catalytic cracker, bitumen, and a large electrical generation and utilities operation. There was a large tank farm, dated both in age and technology, with a fairly new blending facility and jetty area handling significant shipping movements.
Poor industrial relations with resistance to change sapped managerial energies. Outdated attitudes and work practices typified this location.
2.4 Location in Australasia
2.4.1 Facility: Medium-Sized Semi-Complex Petroleum Refinery
At the time of these events, this medium-sized, semi-complex refinery was owned as a joint venture by five partners who used it to process crude oil owned by them—either from their own fields or bought in the spot market.
The refinery was located in a breathtakingly beautiful natural environment. People there were very proud of this, and the quality of life it offered. Right from the time it was conceived, there was a strong lobby against its very existence due to the inherent potential threat to the pristine environment. In spite of the fact that it was always operated to the highest environmental standards in the world at that time, it was an eye sore in the perception of the local people.
2.5 Locations in Central and South America
2.5.1 Facility: Small Petroleum Refinery
This was a small and simple (hydro-skimming) refinery, containing plants for primary distillation, platinum reforming, and hydro-treating of naphtha, kerosene, and gas-oil. The refinery was wholly owned by a major multi-national oil company. It was one of the few technologically advanced industries in the country. For this reason and because it was also among the top quartile payers, it was one of the most sought after places of work. It attracted the best of the local people as employees who proved to be very loyal and were always willing to give their best to the company.
They had a very progressive management team, always on the look-out for improvements and trying to bring the best out of their individual staff. The staff responded enthusiastically to all the challenges put forth by their management.
PART 2: LEADERSHIP
...and seeing it through to fruition
Effective people are not problem-minded, they are opportunity-minded.
Peter Drucker, Management Guru.
Author: V. Narayan
Location1: 2.1.2 Automobile Parts Manufacturer
3.1 Background
On my first day at work in this company, I met my boss, the General Manager of Production (GM). My position had been vacant for a year, during which time the head of the production planning department had been managing it. During this interim period, a number of issues had arisen, which the GM listed for my action. When he finished, I requested a three-week vacation, and he nearly fell off his chair! I explained that I would come to work, but wished to be free of executive responsibility in order to evaluate the current situation for myself. This review would help me identify the expectations of all the stakeholders, including the people on the shop floor—but I did not share this thought with him.
The review would give me a first-hand impression of the current status. From these inputs, I would produce a master plan. Each item in the master plan would be a separate project, with its goals, cost, time, and resource estimates. When he heard this explanation, he accepted my request. He still negotiated the review time period downward to two weeks.
3.2 Review Process
I arranged