Lightening the load

The pressure to maximise process efficiency has never been greater, and much of it is borne by the process engineer. Performance optimisation consultants can now offer a solution by easing the load on hard-pressed engineers, explains Simon Roberts.

Today’s process engineer must battle against limited budgets and restricted resources and still ensure that plant runs at maximum efficiency, as commercial requirements lay down challenging targets for increases in both process output and reliability.

But whereas those pressures have previously been borne directly by the process engineer, recent times have seen a new solution emerge — one that has already proved its effectiveness in the global oil and gas industries where it has been adopted by some major players.

Many process operators often lack sufficient in-house expertise to complete the tasks necessary to achieve maximum efficiency. Even if they do possess this resource it often diminishes over time as experienced personnel change jobs. The result is a decline in the operator’s ability to even maintain current performance levels, let alone improve them.

When this occurs, plant operators start to examine their core processes more closely. As critical plant becomes the focus of attention, less vital ancillary equipment is often ignored, albeit accidentally, and maintenance on it gradually changes from a preventative process to a reactive one.

This causes few problems initially, but once the cumulative effects start to grow, it often starts to show in terms of increased maintenance costs and falls in production availability.

Many plant operators in the petrochemical sector have recently recognised the need for specialist support with this problem and have begun turning to performance optimisation consultants, such as Performance Plus. As a result, they have discovered that sharing the management of process control and reliability issues can provide a direct route to significantly improved performance.

The consultant will typically adopt full responsibility for increasing performance levels, raising efficiency and reducing costs, and will align the plant operator’s business needs with a practical and proven solution designed to add significant value to the plant and extend its operating life.

Under this new approach, some consultants also offer an additional financial inducement to the plant operator by providing their services on a strict risk-reward basis. In short, if the consultant does not hit a set of predetermined improvement targets, they receive no payment.

This effectively makes the contract self-financing for the process operator, removing both the element of risk and the need for significant capital outlay. The most compelling argument for this managed reliability approach is the results it has already produced.

Over the last four years some 30 hydrocarbon industry clients around the world have adopted this method and have been rewarded with typical cost savings in excess of 20% of their rotating equipment budget.

Add this to reliability improvements of up to 300% that have been achieved and the attraction becomes clear. Each performance-based contract is usually approached in the same manner, with the consultant conducting a comprehensive feasibility study to identify possible improvements, assess how they fit with the operator’s specific business needs, and see how they can be measured.

They then combine their own skills with those of specialist strategic partner companies and build a genuinely bespoke solution aimed at minimising both fixed and variable costs, lost profit incidents and capital employed.

This process frequently identifies inadequacies within existing methods of assessing plant performance.

This is where the consultant’s skills pay dividends. They can analyse the available data in minute detail and construct an accurate model of the process, often using cost analysis and performance improvement tools which they have developed themselves. This creates a detailed picture of current reliability and any problem areas, and enables the consultant to design a tailored solution.

Devising and implementing the best remedies for each process depends heavily on the specialist processes and skills which the consultant has at their disposal — one reason why strategic partnerships with other specialist providers are important.

Ultimately however, those processes and skills must be applied in line with a clear understanding of the reliability issues and a carefully planned programme of solutions. Although the analysis and planning stages can take some time, the actual implementation process can normally be completed relatively quickly.

The recommended solution often impacts on relatively few internal budget centres and typically demands minimal restructuring. For this to occur, collaboration between the consultant and operators’ own people is essential, with everyone working towards the agreed targets.

Once implementation is complete that collaboration will continue, although the responsibility for improved performance and cost savings lies solely with the consultant. This frees the process operator to concentrate on their core processes and manage their internal resource, capital and budgeting issues accordingly, safe in the knowledge that their less critical process equipment is being managed through an agreed programme.  

Simon Roberts is with Performance Plus.