33Managing Contractors
Part 7: Analyze
34Reliability Engineering in New Projects
35Computing Reliability Data
36Turnaround Performance Improvements
37Reducing Shutdown Duration
38A Small Matter of Cleaning
39Motor Maintenance Regimes
40Boiler Feed-Water Pump Seals
41Cooling Water Pump Failures
42Heater Outlet Flue Gas Dampers
43Laboratory Oven Failures
44Pump Reliability
45Book Summary
Glossary
Index
Foreword
This book is written by three engineers who have had exceptional experiences in industry, particularly the hydrocarbon process industry. All of them have held positions of authority in the maintenance and reliability of the companies they worked for. A reader will quickly grasp that they were self starters and still are, as evidenced by the creation of this book. These are not men who needed to be pushed. Indeed, I suspect that that would have dampened their motivation to create and install the myriad of solutions and systems that they introduced.
The book is a selection of work problems that these men had to struggle with and solve. The chapters penetrate every aspect of field engineering, maintenance, and field management. Each author was able to make contributions to each section. They were able to do this because of their remarkable breadth of experience, which readers will appreciate as they read and assimilate the various sections.
In my own career as a field engineer and manager in the process industry, I learned to listen and even enjoy the experience of others. Everything you read in this book will not be directly applicable to your particular job at the moment. However, as you read and enjoy their related experiences you will be storing their experiences in your mind. You will build connections to your own experiences that will make the text memorable. Finally, you will form ideas about how to approach problems that will make your respective jobs easier and more fulfilling.
The three authors provide their experiences in facilities in the Middle East, Far East, Europe, and Central America. As a reader, you may want to put yourself in the place of the writers as you study each episode in their long litany of experiences. In this way, you will taste the cultures that formed their experience.
I was gratified that the book did not linger on mechanical “How To” ideas, but got to the heart of what makes a refinery, or a machine manufacturing facility, or any production facility really work well. These men are really pointing out, although they do not specifically say it, that the greatest impetus to successful operations is how people manage themselves and set up the procedures that provide rapid and accurate work products.
At the end of each of their related experiences, the writer delineates the lessons he learned from that encounter and the principles that emanated from the experience. In reading the draft, I found that the lessons and principles capped the learning; they made the narration of the depicted experiences complete.
In summary, this is a must read for people who have to struggle with the day-to-day problems of plant life. If you have a subordinate field position in a manufacturing facility, this book will reveal why bosses do the things they do. If you are in a supervisory or management role, this book will help you steer your career.
The Late Charles J. Latino
Formerly CEO and President
Reliability Center, Inc.
About the Authors
V. Narayan is a leading authority on maintenance and reliability engineering. He is a graduate mechanical engineer from Pune University in India and has over 40 years of experience in maintenance and project management. He has worked in the automobile, pharmaceutical, liquefied natural gas, oil & gas production, and petroleum refining industries. In his long career he has trained, consulted and worked in many countries, including spending eight years as the head of the Maintenance Strategy group in Shell UK Exploration and Production. He headed the Maintenance and Reliability Center of Excellence in Shell.
At Shell, he developed refinery performance measurement methods in the 1990’s that are still effectively used today. For the last 16 years, he has been teaching Reliability Engineering, Maintenance Management, Reliability-Centered Maintenance and Root Cause Analysis to engineers in the USA, Europe, Middle East and Far East. He is an advisor to the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, on their Asset Management MSc program development. He has published many articles and presented papers at international conferences. His book, “Effective Maintenance Management–Risk and Reliability Strategies for Optimizing Performance” is also published by Industrial Press.
Jim Wardhaugh graduated from the University of Liverpool and is a Chartered Engineer. In a 30-year career in Shell he demonstrated success in many different roles (projects, construction, maintenance, technical, inspection, warehousing, transport, quality, and training) in a number of different countries. Within Shell’s Technical Head Office, he guided refineries worldwide on best maintenance practices and on “Computerized Management and Information Systems”. He was a founding member of the Shell MERIT consultancy group. He is an external faculty member of the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, for their MSc program in Asset Management. He provides consultancy services that target performance improvement, particularly in the fields of asset management, operations, and maintenance.
Mahen Das has a mechanical engineering degree from Benares University, India, and is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer. He retired from Shell International in 2002 after 42 years in optimization of maintenance and operational reliability of petroleum refineries and gas plants. His learning and experience has been drawn from hands-on work, at all levels of process plant asset management, at 40 sites in 22 countries. After working for 32 years in the “field”, the last 10 years of his career were spent in transferring this learning to Shell, as well to as third-party clients in the form of consultancy services. During this period he helped establish Shell’s MERIT initiative. As a leader of MERIT, he visited and reviewed the business processes of more than 30 operating plants – Shell’s as well as third-parties’ -- and helped achieve significant improvements in their maintenance and reliability performance. He is currently a freelance consultant in the field of maintenance and reliability of process plants.
Introduction and Navigation Guide
Author: V. Narayan
1.1 Authors’ Background
The school of hard knocks taught me most of the really useful things I learned about reliability and maintenance. I worked with many talented people during my career in industry, who were my best teachers. My co-author Mahen Das and I are both mechanical
