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Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
On the morning of July 19, a fire in CITGO’s Corpus Christi refinery injured a worker. The incident occurred in the alkylation unit of the refinery.
The refinery used Hydrogen Fluoride (HF) as a catalyst for alklyation . Typically in the alkylation process, isobutane and olefins are combined (in presence of HF) to produce a high-octane chemical used in premium gasoline.
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Metal strength and fracture toughness are important mechanical properties for components exposed to fatigue conditions and components with stress concentrations. Optimization of the two properties through alloy selection and component fabrication must be considered when designing components for these situations.
For structural components, strength and fracture toughness are two important mechanical properties. Yield strength is the stress a metal can withstand before deforming. Tensile strength is the maximum stress a metal can support before starting to fracture. Fracture toughness is the energy required to cause a material that contains a crack to fracture.
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Most associate the traditional application of RCA, with some type of undesirable outcome, that has exceeded a set threshold or trigger. It is at this point that a formal RCA process will be set into motion. Because of its serious nature, it will likely have the attention and support of leadership. It may also have the attention of external stakeholders like OEM’s, insurance companies and regulators. As a career ‘RCA’ professional, I must say that this traditional perception unfortunately is the norm, and not the exception in my 35+ years in this space. This is unfortunate because it suppresses the methodology’s potential, and the capability of applying a more holistic approach to preventing such undesirable outcomes in the first place. In this article my intent is to provide a different perspective of how to view ‘RCA’ in a much broader and meaningful context and coupling its use with an effective Defect Elimination (DE) strategy. While most are familiar with hindsight-based RCA, we will explore the emergence of foresight approaches as well. We will also contrast these perspectives in an effort to truly understand WHY we even do RCA, and is it worthwhile?
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[Read more…]We are facing difficulty in developing a definition of Critical Spare Part Inventory. No one is able to define it in its true essence. The situation is further confused with the difference to strategic spare parts. Any guideline or standard where we can find it ?
In the past, every Plant Manager had their own definition of Critical Inventory which changed with time. In optimization of Inventory, the first step is to establish a definition of Inventory considering all factors like production loss, redundancy, safety hazard, failure frequency, and of course, the lead time? Still I am stuck in this phase. I cannot progress, and don’t know what to do 1st, 2nd, and so forth to proceed further in this journey?
Greg Carroll has a graduate degree in Operations Research from Swinburne University. He has a certificate in Machine Learning from Stanford University and in Data Science from the University of Michigan. He has over thirty years’ experience in Enterprise Risk Management. He has applied risk management techniques to IT and Artificial Intelligence systems in mission critical environments like the Department of Defense and Victorian Infectious Disease Reference Laboratories.
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In some industries, 40% of maintenance repairs result from original equipment manufacturing failures. And up to 35% of maintenance is traceable to design engineering mistakes. That totals 75% of maintenance costs during operation can be from prior life cycle process blunders
To get utmost operating plant and equipment reliability, you need to purposefully design and build your business processes to guarantee maximum reliability from each and every phase of the asset life cycle
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Hi Everyone. Are you struggling to implement Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) because you need buy-in from people? Well, if that’s the case, I have a solution for you. And we’re going to take our lead from these gorgeous daffodils.
Daffodils are my all-time favorite flower. I’m a sucker for them: (1) Because they look so happy! (2) You can always rely on them. At the same time every year, the daffodils come up. And there is a technique you can rely on to get the buy-in you need from management and other people within your organization to implement Reliability Centered Maintenance and it is this.
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George Williams, CEO of ReliabilityX, giving us the quick run down on using Infrared Thermography technology and its benefits.
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Following the release of natural gas, it can be ignited resulting in fire which in turn can potentially result in an explosion. So how likely will a gas release ignite?If you are interested in the major failure modes for natural gas transmission pipelines reported, please refer to an earlier post – External Damage: Number One Cause Natural Gas Pipeline Releases.The ignition probability is related to leak size. Let us consider three hole sizes consistent with European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group (EGIG) database – small (pin-hole leak, 2-cm or less), medium (2-cm < Leak < pipe diameter) and large (full bore rupture, FBR). The table below summarizes ignition probabilities from EGIG report.
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The utility had an excellent opportunity to implement a green initiative. Energy could be created from excess digester gas at the wastewater treatment plant. There seemed to be a full range of feasible options after an engineering analysis.
“We can convert the gas and use it to either heat the building or reuse it to make the wastewater treatment process more efficient,” explained the chief engineer. “it is a 10- to 15-year payback, but the regulators love it so it is easy to get approved. It will buy us some goodwill too.”
“Can we reduce the payback if we sell the energy to the electric grid?” asked the chief financial officer.
[Read more…]Properly conducted RCAs are time and resource consuming, so when we are not getting the expected ROI’s from our efforts, we have to consider why are we wasting so much money doing the same thing over and over again? This article will focus on the commercial and process aspects of RCA, that can take away from their effectiveness on the corporate bottom-line and impact the safety of our co-workers.
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Recently, we ran a two-week-long survey about training. It asked two questions and here are the results:
For training of your workforce, which do you prefer?
Nearly 3000 viewed the question and 70 answered:
The 20th Century saw maintenance strategy evolve from corrective, predictive and preventive maintenance to reliability maximization. During the 21st century maintenance will disappear and be replaced with risk-free equipment operation where no failures occur. The first steps taken by LRS Consultants toward building risk-free businesses and riskless operational processes was the invention of the Plant Wellness Way “system-of-reliability” methodology.
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In a previous article I explored how workers and employers should approach the future and opined that both would be better off if they each understood the motivations and tactics that the other would employ to further their interests. Workers are concerned about achieving and maintaining marketability to employers and companies are concerned about acquiring the workforce they need to compete in the markets in which they do business. I assert that understanding what’s driving the approach each side will take to achieve its aims will be crucial to competing.
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In measurement science, “bias” refers to the systematic error component of the measurement system. Unlike other types of measurement error that are randomly distributed, a bias predictably shifts a measurement in the same direction.
For instance, I recently facilitated a “round robin” measurement correlation study with two other companies, where we compared the outputs of our hardness testers using the same set of test samples. While preparing for that study, I realized that one of our hardness testers, on average, tested 1.1 Rockwell B points higher than the reference sample. It wasn’t testing exactly 1.1 points over, but instead ranged from .8 to 1.4 points over across a series of tests. In other words, we had two error components: a bias of +1.1 points and a random error of +/- .3 points. To compensate for this bias, we shifted down the output reading of the tester by 1.1 points, leaving only the random error component in our tester’s output values.
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