Meridium

Process industries should take heed of the recently submitted draft report by the CSB on the Chevron Richmond fire and explosion that occurred in August of 2012.  The report ultimately defines the incident that endangered the lives of 19 workers as preventable.  The pipe that  ruptured was subject to sulfidation corrosion – metal deterioration caused by the presence of sulfur compounds at high temperatures.   This well known damage mechanism was not acted upon in this case, even though multiple recommendations had been made.  The investigation determined that those recommendations spanned more than 10 years. 

The report goes on to detail a list of recommendations that include greater government insight, greater regulatory control, greater community and worker involvement.  While not being a proponent of bigger government, the message can't be denied that something must be done to avoid and prevent future incidents such as this at our nations process facilities.  In the news just yesterday morning was yet another report of an explosion.  This time in Waco Tx. at a fertilizer plant. 

The risk associated with operating these facilities is inherent to the design, process, and chemicals that are being used or being produced.  Acknowledging that risk and managing it in the most effective manner is significantly different that than continuing to "roll the dice" and always assume the outcome will be in our favor.   The line between acceptable risk and intolerable risk is something that is broadly defined by society.  In the process industry terms and methodologies such as ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable) FMEA (failure modes and effects analysis) PHA (process hazards analysis) and many others abound.  There is no shortage of risk assessment methodologies, or technology to support those various methodologies.

What is needed to be able to prevent incidents such as this and also to prevent greater regulatory scrutiny and the associated cost that would add to doing business, is a complete and broadly accepted picture of risk and a set of actionable recommendations to reduce that risk to tolerable levels.  This goes beyond selection of metallurgy for a given application, and needs to address the corporate psyche in a manner that places risk reduction and management of risk on an even par with net profits.

Consider the results of a recent Asset Safety webcast, that was attended by nearly 100 industry professionals, that shows that the priorities associated with recommendation tracking and implementation is an area that needs greater focus. Consider also that many of the recommendations that were listed as incomplete are more than 10 years old.

Learning from our past mistakes means that we cannot simply ignore risk.  It's won't go away.   It is a ever present fact in the businesses we are engaged in.  We can either choose to manage that risk in a manner that is consistent with the long range goals of our organization and culture, which is not to allow failure mechanisms and other hazards to run to failure, or thin to a point where a pole can poked through a pipe, or we can take a proactive approach towards the management of risk. Risks of all severities and magnitudes should have visibility from the "board room" to the "control room".  It is only when all involved parties (e.g. those who stand to lose the most) are aligned that we will be able to to get beyond the "glad that didn't happen to me" mentality that remains prevalent in our industries to this day.  

Here at Meridium the PM serves a leadership role and is essentially the product owner.  We provide vision and requirements for both the current release and future releases. The PM will be asked to balance their time between customer-facing, market-facing and internal R&D activities. 

The PM must:

• Know the Customer
• Know the Market
• Own the Requirements

Our key focuses within each of these areas are;

Customer

• Managed Focus Group
• Strategic Account Support
• Special Support Needs
• Professional Services Enablement
• Measured Product Satisfaction

Market

• Thought Leadership (outward facing Presentations, Blogs, White Papers)
• Industry Conference Participation
• Market and Competitive Analysis
• Product Positioning, Messaging, Collateral, Demo's
• Sales Enablement

Product

• Managed Roadmap, Vision and Release Plan
• Product ROI
• Requirements Delivery
• Functional Validation and Release Management

As you can see Meridium has a made Product Management a key part of the process. But as a Product Manager I can tell you that is only works with your help. Join us at Meridium Conference 2013 and represent your organization within your market and help shape the future of Meridium APM.

Meet each of the Product managers; Don Rozette, John Wimmer, Mark Sinozich, Dave Brown and Michael Warren. Join in the Focus Groups and various Product Workshops. Schedule time with Chris DeFalco our Director of Product Management or Joe Nichols our VP of Product Strategy.

A recommendation is a proposal to do something different to yield a better result.  So how often does it happen when you’ve gone through the effort to doing a root cause analysis only to have that failure happen some time in the not to distant future?  All of the solutions we came up with in the RCA were never implemented and a few months later we have the same failure that we solved. 

In a terrific blog post by my colleague Stephen Rucker, he discusses the high cost of not acting.  He poses the question, "what can companies do to protect themselves?".  A fundamental starting point is at the recommendation.  Whenever I speak about this topic at events or gatherings this is an area that tends to resonate above all others.  Even though there are fantastic tools and methods that can help organizations to develop strategies and deploy them it all comes down to the next action.  So where to you store and process the next actions that come out of your strategy development or failure elimination efforts?  Your head?  A spreadsheet?  A stack of index cards?

The following quote is from a comment on wikipedia on David Allen's book, "Getting Things Done - the art of stress free productivity" (which by the way I think everyone should be forced to read.. if they want to)

"The human brain's "reminder system" is inefficient and seldom reminds us of what we need to do at the time and place when we can do it. Consequently, the "next actions" stored by context in the "trusted system" act as an external support which ensures that we are presented with the right reminders at the right time." 

So what does your trusted system look like?  Is it a central, scalable system, that allows you to process these important recommendations with accountability?  All of the higher level work in strategy development and defect elimination goes nowhere without a place to process the next actions that result from that hard work.

Those of us in the Instrumentation and Controls fields are all too familiar with the terms of: “Grandfathering” and “Protective Functions”, as they relate to industry standards such as: IEC-61511, and ISA 84.01.  Yet few of us have fully met the requirements set forth in the standards.  During a recent “Asset Safety” webinar which was attended by nearly 100 industry professionals, one of the poll questions asked the attendees to: “Describe their organizations approach to “Protective Functions” that existed prior the IEC-61511/ISA 84.01 standards”  The results from that question which will surprise you are below.

Clearly an overwhelming number of us still have work to do regarding complying with the standards.  Considering that those standards are now in their 17^th year, you have to ask why?

  As we consider the “mission time” of those protective functions, we can see that we are approaching and may actually have reached the end of useful life of those protective functions. Common reliability models such as the “bathtub curve” can’t be ignored.  Continuing to “replace in kind” simply for the sake of not invoking current standards will not improve the functional safety in our process facilities.  Parts and support for older technology platforms will continue to be harder and more expensive to come by, negating the ease of the “replace in kind” methodology.

A big part of the reason we struggle with the “when and why” questions is that we have not solved the “how” questions.  If we consider that the option of doing less than what is required (which is what we are doing today) is not aligned with our long range goals, then there are really only two viable options. From a “how” perspective those options are:

• Outsource the portions of the safety lifecycle that we are not prepared to manage ourselves, and bring in 3^rd parties as needed. 
• Hire outside talent, or train the folks “in house” to manage those portions of the safety lifecycle that we have neglected up until now.

Both options have associated pros and cons that will need to be evaluated to determine which option fits best.

Back to the original question of “When does “grandfathering” of protective functions end?”  The answer is really up to you.  What we know with complete certainty however is that the time for making the decisions needed to end “grandfathering” within our facilities is at hand.   A recent Intech article contended article that the installed base of protective functions that are nearing the end of their useful life could be in the neighborhood of $8 billion worldwide.

As we consider the “how” options we should also be considering how we plan to measure compliance with the standards and how we communicate that compliance to individual stake holders.  Can this be done using our standard business systems?  Will new or specific business systems be required?  How well do the business systems that manage our process safety integrate with other business systems or our maintenance management systems? 

Understanding that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to managing protective functions or ending “grandfathering” we often “waffle” between possibilities, not knowing which will serve us best today and also tomorrow.  We don’t need to “waffle” any longer.  Proactively managing our protective functions and ending “grandfathering” doesn’t have to be a lofty goal that may or may not be achieved in our lifetimes.  If you are looking for a solution to the age old “grandfathering” and compliance questions that will integrate with existing business, and maintenance management systems, contact info@meridium.com

A recently published study by Great Britain’s HSE broke the safety lifecycle into three major areas:

• Hazards Assessment/SIF Specification
• SIF Design and Verification
• Operation and Maintenance

Not surprisingly the study concluded that 44% of all SIS/SIF related errors occurred during the hazards assessment/specification phase of the lifecycle.  The study goes further to state that many of these errors occurred because the SIF/SIS designer incorrectly considered the interactions of one SIF to the rest of the process.  In essence, the activation of one SIF whether demand or spuriously based which then caused unforeseen demands, and hazards in other areas of the process.  

During a recent panel discussion, one of the panelists challenged the audience with the question “Why are they called shut-down systems, shouldn’t we really call them keep running systems?”  His premise was that the engineering discipline as a whole had become enamored with or “sold on” the “fail-safe” design.  Not only is this not required by the standard, but as mentioned above spurious activation of a SIF can in fact cause hazards elsewhere that may not have been considered during the hazards assessment/SIF specification phase of the lifecycle. 

If the user has a comparative process indication that is independent of the initiating event, it is possible to design the SIF to be “fault tolerant” without increasing hardware count or cost.  In the example below, you can see that SIF-003 is a 2oo2 voted sensor arrangement, which based strictly on voting architecture is an extremely reliable design.  Also note that there is an independent high pressure sensor and associated high pressure alarm.  In this case the SIF designer could have used a 1oo1 voting architecture for SIF-003.  By using the comparative process indication the engineer could have implemented a deviation alarm based on any difference between the SIF sensor indication and the comparative BPCS sensor indication.  Not only would that arrangement be significantly safer, it would be almost as reliable, with 1/3 less cost to install and maintain.    

Below is a list of common initiating events that should be considered during the hazards assessment/SIF specification phase of the lifecycle.  How well we manage or reduce the probabilities associated with initiating events such as these, means taking a pro-active view of risk.  (e.g. plan for the best, but prepare for the worst). 

At this point it is necessary to differentiate initiating events from latent or root causes. Initiating events are distinctly different from root or latent causes. In general, root or latent causes create latent weaknesses in a system. When a challenge arises or a demand is made on the system, these weaknesses give rise to an initiating event. For example:

• “Inadequate operator training” is not an initiating event, but is a potential underlying cause of an initiating event of the ‘human failure’ type.

• “Inadequate test and inspection” is not an initiating event, but is a potential underlying cause of an initiating event of the ‘equipment failure’ type

One of the most common “silos” in industry today exists between the group responsible for process safety management and the group that manages instrumentation and controls.  Ensuring that these two groups can pass information, and work “hand-in-glove” means that the two need to share the responsibility of hazards assessment and SIF specification, which can best be enabled by working from a common management platform.  APM’s Asset Safety work process is enabled through the complete integration of hazards analysis with a TUV certified SIF design verification and periodic validation platform that encompasses the entire lifecycle.  Common mistakes associated with requirements specification can be reduced, functional safety can be improved and lifecycle costs can be optimized, through the application of a little common sense and a work platform that pro-actively manages the entire scope of the lifecycle.

Meridium's Webcast on Asset Safety will be taking place January 17th at 11am (EST). Click here to learn more and register!

Thanks to all who attended our webcast on Asset Health!  One of the poll question results that I found particular interesting is shown below.

How are tablets being adopted for use for field data collection?

Over 50% of attendees appear to have an iPad (or similar tablet device) on their wish list for the New Year.  The response “Anticipated” means that tablets are in future plans.

As we are in the holiday season, I know one family that is anticipating the delivery of an iPad.  My home is just another data point for the market trend with regard to the revolution from PC’s to mobile devices.  According to one recent study, global market share of traditional Windows-based PC’s has fallen to 35%, as opposed to 90% for the better part of this century.  Within the last 3 years, the steep growth of Apple and Android based mobile devices has entirely changed the commercial market.

For those of us that can remember back to the last century, this trend can be compared to the mainstream conversion to PC’s over mainframes and minicomputers which are now essentially obsolete.  The difference is that the rate of change now is much more rapid.   As the poll results above indicate, this new mobile trend is being reflected in our industry applications as well as the commercial market.

Meridium is anticipating the future much like you.  We are investing in mobileAPM to deliver the power of Asset Performance Management into the right hands at the right time.  Our initial focus will be in the area of Asset Health Management.  So please stay tuned for updates!  And if you missed our webcast on Asset Health, you can view the on-demand version on apmTV by clicking here.

Recently we held a meeting of APM practitioners and posed the question – “If it were your money, where would you invest in APM”?  So we gave everyone 10 “APM dollars” and asked them to allocate the money individually across APM work processes and future strategic initiatives.  For those of you who know APM well, the exercise was markedly unfair because 10 “dollars” is not enough to cover all solutions, let alone future initiatives.

After tallying up the results we found the top five included both Asset Health and mobile APM solutions.  Ten years ago, the answer would have been focused on reliability analysis methods and historical data.  Five years ago, the answer would have been focused on asset strategy management techniques like RCM, FMEA and PM optimization.  These are still fundamental tenets of APM, but the investment results show the maturity of APM among its practitioners.  We’ve eliminated failures thru reliability improvement efforts.  We’ve improved our maintenance plans with better asset management techniques. 

Next…?  Give me the tools to assess the condition, process performance and historical data holistically to predict and prevent failures.  Today’s technology and future innovations make this an ever increasing reality in ways we only dreamed of before. 

As we listen to you and watch these trends closely, we are excited the trends align with our product investments and strategic initiatives in the area of Asset Health Management.  I invite you to join me for a webcast on this topic on December 13^th, 2012, please click here to register.  I am certainly looking forward to the future of APM!           

Our third of three blogs stemming from an APMTV broadcast where Meridium asked a group of over one hundred industry professionals this poll question; “How many tools (databases) do you currently use across your organization for monthly reporting?” the results of these responses were quite surprising.  

The results of the survey were:

As was the case with the first two questions, this distribution is pretty much in line with what I have seen through interaction with users at trade shows, but very different from the Meridium Mechanical Integrity Focus Group.

As with the other two survey questions, I did a follow up inquiry, to provide as a base for this blog. I made contact with several of the individuals who attended the webinar to ask how they had voted and why.  I gathered very large numbers representing the amount of time spent on reporting by those I followed up with. Keep in mind that two of the three possible answers lend themselves to be very time consuming. The first is; using two or more databases to compile the necessary data would seem to be the worst case. Until that is you talk to those in the 10% that answered zero. The couple that I spoke to are still paper and spreadsheet based mechanical integrity. This meant that they were spending a crippling number of man-hours each month to compile data for management and regulatory bodies. Meridium’s Asset Performance Management solution can ease the burden on these 80% simply through implementation before even taking advantage of what may be improvements to work processes, like RBI, RCA, SIS and FMEA etc.  Meridium is able to do this by providing to you a centralized location to house all this data electronically, gives you a starting point and significant efficiencies in your work process.

We have all faced and overcome these cultural changes as we began to move into to an Asset Performance Management solution. Can you provide specific examples of how the move to an integrated solution helped you?

During life all of us need to make choices.  These choices ultimately affect the manner in which we live our lives.  A simple choice made at an early age can drastically change the course of our lives, either for the better or for the worse.  For example, choosing to exercise regularly can help a person to remain physically healthy throughout their lives.  It can also have a positive psychological effect, warding off depression and anxiety.  These positive effects bring with them financial benefits as greater health means lower hospital bills.  In addition, regularly scheduled doctor visits can potentially reveal health issues that can be fixed if caught early.

      If all a person had to think about was their health, striving to stay healthy would be an obvious decision.  Choices about what to eat would be simple and we wouldn't even dream of going a day without exercising.  We would wash our hands after touching things and we would avoid potential dangerous situations.

      Unfortunately, as we all know, there are many more things to worry about.  How can we save more money so that we are prepared for a rainy day?  Will our 401k ever bounce back?  Are you going to pick the kids up after school, or am I?  By the way, we are out of milk and we need to bring a dessert to dinner at your parents' house, could you pick those up at the store?  I haven't called my sister in a while, I wonder what she's up to?  Our son just received a "D" on his report card...how can we make sure that he improves?  Soon, our focus on our health goes right out the window.

      The same mindset exists in the world of maintenance, reliability, and asset performance management.  Businesses have much more to worry about than the health of their physical assets.  How can we be more profitable?  How can we increase our market share and better compete with our competitors around the world?  That recent safety issue brought us some bad press, how can we regain the public's trust?

      With so much on their plates, executives have very little time to worry about things like "risk based inspection" and "failure modes and effects analysis," even though these can contribute to the health of the company by preventing spills, explosions, and lost production.  Like our own physical health, there is a high cost of not acting when we ignore the health of our physical assets.  These may seem like "operational issues" but they certainly have corporate consequences.  

     What can companies do to protect themselves?  They can start by being proactive and monitoring the condition of their assets.  This can be done with thickness monitoring tools like those found in APM software.  Other APM tools can play the part of the doctor's office and the lab by allowing companies to find the root cause of the bad symptoms that they are experiencing.  

During an apmTV webcast Meridium asked a group of over one hundred industry professionals this poll question; “Is your Mechanical Integrity Solution using Real-Time Data as the Basis of the Risk Analysis?” the response was not a surprise, however  the explanations that came from the follow up were.

The results of the survey were:

This was pretty much in line with what I have seen through interaction with users at trade shows, focus groups etc.

As a follow up, to provide validity to this blog I made contact with several of the individuals who attended the webinar to ask how they had voted and why.  A few of the responses were as expected and can be summarized as “the technology is new and we just aren’t there yet”. But many responded with “we feel like automating this process will introduce errors and undue or overly conservative concerns”. This response really caught me off guard. Why? Because, these are two of the primary reasons that I would give as compelling drivers of using this technology.  By API’s definition of the RBI approach we would expect each iteration (updating) of our risk study to become less conservative by eliminating assumptions or estimations made in the initial study. Perhaps this is an indication that the industry needs more case studies out there confirming this as a best practice.

Do you have examples of how this has worked for you, good or bad?

Meridium will continue to work on making the industries Asset Performance Management best practices more efficient. Having made significant advances in Meridium APM 3.5.0 (click to watch webinar) we know there is still work that we can do to help our users streamline their work process. Let’s take a look at a couple examples we are working on.

Asset Grouping

Today’s inspection codes allow owner users to group assets by operating, design and corrosion characteristics. API 510 9.3.5 says “The pressure vessel owner or user shall have the option to establish vessel inspection classes by grouping vessels into common classes of service, pressure, and/or risk.” API 580 6.3.4 mentions “It is often advantageous to group equipment within a process unit into systems or circuits where common environmental operating conditions exist based on process chemistry, pressure and temperature, metallurgy, equipment design and operating history. By dividing a process unit into systems, the equipment can be screened together saving time compared to treating each piece of equipment separately.” This process today is very labor intensive and performed in most facilities by a series of data dumps and spreadsheet evaluations to compare damage mechanisms, corrosion rates, material of construction etc. Meridium has developed a programmatic way to return these groups to the Meridium user and allow them to leverage this group to ensure their inspection efforts are focused on those assets within the group that are most critical. An equally beneficial use of our automated grouping will be when severe or higher than expected corrosion is found, the user will be able to pull that equipment up as part of its group and make certain that they are inspecting other assets with similar characteristics.

The time saved by automating this process will bring tremendous value to any organization.

Mobility

With today’s data becoming increasingly dynamic mechanical integrity inspections will be no different. Imagine a scenario where you have an Inspection Specialist (Drew) in the field and a Risk Analyst (Bill) in the office both running their respective processes in Meridium APM. We are developing an APM Messenger to facilitate the following conversation;

Bill: “Hi Drew, I don’t quite understand the extent of the CUI damage found on the fractionation column C-101. As you know this could be a huge risk. Could you capture more details while in that unit?”

Drew who is inspecting in the unit with APM Mobile on his iPad gets a notification about Bill’s message. Drew opens up the notification and is taken to the discussion.

Drew: “Bill thanks for identifying the concern. I am close to the column now. I will send you some information in a few minutes.”

This sort of real-time interaction, by eliminating lost opportunity that is consumed by travel to and from the office, permitting, awaiting data entry, will be of great value to Meridium users.

The Asset Management world is a buzz with defining and implementing Integrity Operating Windows (IOWs), which is the next push on technology in our space. Many of our codes and standards are now pointing us specifically at monitoring operating conditions as part of our asset management process. To quote just a few; API RP 580 Section 6.4 says “Operating within the boundaries is critical to the validity of the RBI study as well as good operating practice.” API 510 Section 5.4.2 mentions “The presence or potential of damage in a vessel is dependent upon its material of construction, design, construction, and operating conditions.” And API 584 will be dedicated entirely to IOWs stating a scope of “The purpose of this RP is to explain the importance of IOW’s for process safety management and to guide users in how to establish and implement an IOW program for refining and petrochemical process facilities for the express purpose of avoiding unexpected equipment degradation leading to loss of containment”.  Meridium, in order to maintain or position as an industry leader, has been working with internal subject matter experts (SMEs) as well SMEs from within our client base. As a result of this effort we have introduced new product into our Asset Performance Management solution called Policy Manager. Policy Manager is fully integrated with the existing workflows allowing us to pull in real time operating data at any point in your work process and turn this data into action. These policies can consume data that is drawn from you process historian, your CMMS, manual inputs such as lab results or any combination of these.

Let’s take a brief look at how Meridium’s Mechanical Integrity (MI) solution will incorporate this new technology. By identifying all of the critical variables associated with a particular damage mechanism Meridium can monitor those for you as well as help identify others that may need to be implemented. For example in Meridium’s APM Policy Manager you are able create polices with multiple thresholds allowing you to take specific actions appropriate to the level of the excursion. If you are monitoring skin metal temperatures on your furnace tubes you may have a preset temperature of 1000^oF and would only be concerned about this if it persisted for a cumulative time of 100 hours, at which point the policy would be executed and an email generated and sent to those persons responsible for this asset. That same policy could have a second threshold of 1050^oF with a setting of either instant execution of the policy or a shorter time setting to trigger the policy.

Meridium’s MI solution has also taken advantage of the fact the Policy Manager is embedded in our work process by leveraging this new functionality to provide significant enhancements in the RBI workflow. MI now uses Policy Manager to deliver comprehensive inspection strategies based on the damage mechanisms and risk calculated for each component of your assets. These Inspection Policies can now be modified by Risk Analysts, Inspectors or Inspection Engineers without requiring code changes or IT support.

To see this and many of the other features of MI from our latest release please join me on November 1^st 2012 as I present a webinar highlighting Mechanical Integrity 3.5.0. Click here to register for this event.

I remember several years ago when I was working a summer job in Minnesota.  It was 2007 and the long awaited rumors of Apple's first iPhone had become reality and in effect, the world of mobile phones changed forever.  I personally experienced a mental battle which raged between the side of practicality ("You already have a working phone that is in excellent shape and so you don't need to buy a new phone") and curiosity/interest ("Look how amazing the iPhone is...look at all you can do!").  After several days of internal debating, I broke down and bought an iPhone approximately a week after it was released.

      What happened?  Did curiosity/interest decidedly trounce practicality?  Not at all.  Practicality won out in the end...and that is the secret to Apple's success with the iPhone.

     Why is this seemingly overpriced luxury item a practical purchase?  Simply, the iPhone has integrated functionality: it is one device that does everything.  It makes calls.  It allows you to text with a QWERTY keyboard.  It plays music (meaning you can leave your separate MP3 player at home).  It lets you use your business and personal email accounts.  It lets you search the internet.  It gives you maps and directions.  It tells you the time.  It lets you buy music and movies on the go.  It keeps track of your contacts and gives you a calendar that you can sync with your work calendar.  It also provides all of this in a compact device that is rugged yet sophisticated and incredibly easy to use.  

      In effect, the basic functionality of the iPhone allows you to carry a phone, MP3 player, GPS, computer, day planner, and camera in your pocket.  With the addition of "Apps," this functionality grows exponentially.  I was surprised to find that some critics predicted the iPhone to flop because they saw all of this extra functionality as superfluous.  Time has proven that having all of your tools in one place makes for a more elegant solution.

      The same thing is true in the world of maintenance and reliability.  Many companies today are still trying to face their challenges with solutions that resemble the pre-iPhone mobile phone industry.  These companies know they need an Enterprise Asset Management system (EAM) in order to keep track of their asset data.  Sometimes they use a separate root cause analysis program to figure out why their equipment fails but the results of this analysis is not tied to the asset record in the EAM system.  Other companies have heard about the benefits of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and so they gather a group of engineers and operators together to do the analysis which remains in a spreadsheet or printed in a book in the manager's office.  Some companies have other data sources like process historians and condition monitoring data which they cannot seem to tie to any of the other data sources and analyses.

     Enter Asset Performance Management (APM) and APM software.  APM is the closest thing to an "iPhone for maintenance and reliability" that you can find in the world today.  Why?  Because, like the iPhone, APM software has integrated functionality.  As a tool, it is a "one stop shop" for asset data, allowing engineers to quickly find the information that they need.  These engineers are able to see all failure history, condition monitoring data, as well as any analyses associated with any piece of equipment.  APM software takes away the hassle of trying to manually combine data from different sources, allowing engineers to do real engineering work.  APM software is practical for all companies who need to manage physical assets.  

     The edge that this "iPhone" gives to executives is manyfold.  Having centralized data means that your engineers can track asset performance and catch asset failures befor they occur, ensuring that unplanned downtime does not upset production goals and revenue streams.  APM software helps you to maintain regulatory compliance in areas like mechanical integrity, protecting you against excessive fines and protecting employee safety against explosions and chemical loss of containment.  As history has proven multiple times, plant explosions are expensive and hurt people, profits, company reputation, and the environment.  With APM software and properly applied work processes, you are protected against the many painful "surprises" that plague process industries.

     For more information on how to gain this competitive edge in asset intensive industries, contact us by clicking here. 

Many process industry companies struggle with asset-related issues.  For some, their equipment is constantly breaking down "without warning," leaving them scrambling to get everything back online as their production goals go out the window.  Others are so paranoid about things breaking down unexpectantly that they routinely shut down their equipment in order to perform preventive tasks.  They are doing a lot of work that they hope is adding value but they don't know for sure if it is.  At the very least, they are comforted by the fact that things break down unexpectedly less often.

      In both cases, companies who do too much or too little may miss out on the value available in their maintenance programs.  Often these companies seek to be reliability driven but are unaware of how they will implement reliability best practices or they lack management's support of such a reliability initiative.  Often reliability initiatives take a back seat to other initiatives that shout louder into the ears of executives.

     While reliability may not be the top priority to your company, it nevertheless should not be ignored.  As many companies have found with dire consequences, there is a high cost of not acting.  Unexpected asset failures cause production interruptions that make companies miss their production goals.  Missed production goals mean delayed shipments, which in turn create low customer satisfaction.  Mechanical integrity failures cause explosions or oil spills that threaten the safety of employees and the environment.  Such failures can result in compliance violations that cause plant shutdowns.  

     If companies want to avoid such issues, APM software can be an appropriate solution.  Such tools including risk based inspection, root cause analysis, and failure modes and effects analysis create value for companies by crunching data from multiple sources so that companies can make data-based decisions to eliminate costly asset failures.  For more information about APM software, click here.   

Are you struggling to increase profits at your company?  

Are your revenues limited by unpredictable production?  

Are your maintenance costs consistently high?  

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you are similar to a large majority of those proactive companies that seek out solutions like asset performance management.  As a solution provider in this industry, Meridium works with its clients to acchieve goals like lower maintenance costs, increased asset availability, and increased return on assets (ROA).  For managers who want to realize such goals, Meridium can help develop business cases to show executives how reliability and maintenance affect the bottom line.  As a result, asset performance management (APM) can prove its worth in the corporate headquarters as well as the shop floor.  Many companies have seen how APM software makes good financial sense, as it protects corporations, the environment, and people from the risks associated with asset failures.

You may be saying, "That's all fine and good for those working in the private sector, but I work in a public entity.  We are government sponsored and so every time I bring up 'cost savings,' no one is interested in listening."

We hear you.  Often companies with government sponsorship don't have to be profitable in order to survive.  While far from being lax, these entities don't face the profit-driven pressures experienced by private sector companies.  If being profitable were the only goal that APM helped to realize, then it might not be necessary for public entities to investigate asset performance management.  The truth is that there are many reasons why companies (public and private) investigate reliability and reliability best practices.  Profit aside, all companies must manage their asset risks properly to ensure compliance.  This is especially true in the area of mechanical integrity, since a loss of containment can adversely affect the environment and threaten the lives of employees.

In April 2010, the world became very aware of the risks associated with asset failures as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded due to the failure of a blowout preventer.  In the news stories following the explosion, the focus more often was placed on the environmental impact of the subsequent oil spill and the deaths of the 11 crew members who died in the explosion.  The profitability of the company was not discussed in great detail in light of the fact that greater problems had occured than "lost profits."

Every company, public and private, needs to manage risk.  These risks can threaten safety, regulatory compliance, the environment, and, in cases of government sponsored entities, the performance / mission expectations of your government or public sponsor.  

As Stephen Covey, author of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," taught, individuals and companies need to be proactive.  Being proactive means preparing before a disaster strikes in order to prevent it.  The most effective companies implement reliability work processes and supporting tools in order to protect their companies' long term interests.

Accurate and reliable Instrumentation and control systems should be considered during any asset performance initiative.  Meeting safety and regulatory requirements often necessitates the adoption or implementation of a calibration management program.  In order to successfully manage an instrument calibration program several things immediately come to mind.  The question most often asked is:

• How often should the device be calibrated?

In the next few paragraphs we will discuss the best practices of an instrument calibration management program.  Initially calibration interval should be based on the criticality of the device, and any applicable failure rate data that is available.  Criticality of instrumentation is commonly defined in three categories (e.g. high, medium, low).  Highly critical instruments, such as those that are used as part of safety systems and protective layers, and those with other regulatory requirements, These instruments will commonly account for 20% of the overall population.  Medium criticality instruments, such as those that are associated with "control loops"  typically comprise 60% of the overall population.  The remaining 20% of the overall population are the lowest criticality instruments, such as process indicators, status indications, and non-critical or low priority alarms.

Once instrument criticalities have been defined, appropriate intervals will need to be assigned.  Highly critical instruments could initially be calibrated at an interval of 1/2 of the failure rate, or annually which ever is more frequent.  Medium criticality instruments could be calibrated at a interval twice that of the highly critical instruments.  The least critical instruments could be calibrated at an interval of twice that of the medium critical instruments.

As with defining calibration intervals, acceptable  performance percentages for each of those criticalities will be developed.  For the highly critical instruments 95%of the population with an As found error <1.1% is recommended.  The pass ratio or the allowable error can be scaled down to 92% with a max allowable As Found error of <2.1% for medium critical instruments, and 90% with a max allowable error of <3.1% for the least critical instruments.

Based on the performance of the select population of instruments (e.g highly critical level transmitters) and the results of the calibrations performed on those level transmitters, patterns will emerge that will guide the analyst to increase or decrease the calibration interval to maintain a performance criteria equal to the criteria that was predefined.  Instruments can be grouped by Class, Type, Manufacturer, Application etc.  The deeper into the classification, the lower the variance of data will be.

Plot the calibration error of the population under analysis (excluding outliers) by statistical analysis. 

As demonstrated above, it is possible to optimize your calibration periodicity and still maintain the accuracy requirements of the business unit in the most cost effective means through statistical analysis of the data obtained during the calibration. 

There are no excuses for being poor asset managers.  With websites such as Brightnest the non-engineer can do an excellent job of managing their most important asset.  This free and easy to use service provides homeowners with a means to manage home asset lifecycle activities in a central location.  This asset management system comes “complete with reminders for when your regular maintenance needs to be done. The service can even keep track of your product manuals, paint colors, and more.”  

Consider now how the domestic asset manager can have an asset health indicator score for her home.  She'll have a dashboard of all relevant risk-mitigating tasks that will also help her project and control costs.  Most of all, the expensive, unplanned downtime of the air conditioner in mid-summer can be avoided.

Another example of “domestic” asset management systems is BMW.  In 2002 BMW introduced condition Based Service.  Starting with the 7 Series BMW offered onboard sensors and algorithms that measure oil condition and level, frequency and severity of braking, AC micro filter, mileage and several other factors.  Data and results are electronically submitted to the local service center.  Conditions are evaluated against predicted failure rates.  BMW calls you to schedule servicing.  The company describes the benefits of this service in terms of safety and convenience.  “Save time and money by servicing your vehicle only when it needs it…based upon individual driving habits”.  Service times can be reduced as the service center can be completely prepared ahead of time with technicians and parts.

Asset Performance Management is what Brightnest and BMW offer to their clients - only on a much larger scale with some analytics to make it fun.  My US TAG colleague Scott Morris and I will be presenting a paper on "Taking the Fun and Excitement Out Of Asset Management" at SMRP Annual Conference in October.  Please join us there.

Change is difficult.  Given the many different ways that culture affects a company, implementing culture change is like eating an elephant.  Everyone who is trying to implement the change looks at the huge task before them and wonders "Where do we begin?"  This can be especially daunting since many of the small changes that make up the big change depend upon each other ("We can't do X until we do Y first...but Y will only work if we have successfully done Z...and Z needs to happen at the same time as A, B, and C...and doing B really relies on our understanding of X, which comes after Z and Y...Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!!).  

This also occurs as companies look to do reliability initiatives.  They want to improve availability while lowering costs, often based on a methodology like failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) or root cause analysis (RCA).  Unfortunately FMEA and RCA are but pieces of an overall puzzle and while they have their place they need to be used within the right context.  That context may depend on the company having foundational elements in place like failure coding and asset taxonomy.  This context likely also depends on the effectiveness of communication between operations, maintenance, and IT. 

Successful reliability initiatives bring value.  These initiatives are far-reaching and draw on the expertise of many different teams including IT, operations, maintenance, and reliability engineering.  Due to all of the moving parts (the "size of the elephant") companies looking to implement a reliability initiative need a roadmap forward in order to ensure that they capture the value that they seek.  This is the essense of the Meridium Value Assurance Program (MVAP).  

MVAP helps companies capture the value that they need.  MVAP begins with an assessment, which defines the specific challenges facing the assessed company.  These challenges are then matched with reliability best practices in a "roadmap" that directs the company forward.  It provides catered direction in the form of work processes supported by proven analytical tools.  MVAP also provides management with conservative figures regarding the expected return on investment at various mileposts.  

For companies who really want to get value out of their reliability initiative but are unsure how to "eat the elephant," contact Meridium by clicking here.

Bring up the topic of Safety Instrumented Systems in any industrial forum and you will get a spectrum of responses that could range from "fear and mistrust", to "not my job, don't need to know" to "deer in the headlights"

It seems that many of the folks in the Instrumentation and Controls field may be among those who do not understand the role of the safety instrumented system.  This month's issue of Intech magazine which is published by the ISA (international society of automation) featured two such articles.   Both articles were very good and informative, and offered links to register for upcoming training sessions.  

So the question really becomes how well do people outside of the Instrumentation and Controls world understand safety instrumented systems?  How well do those people need to understand the role of safety instrumented systems?  The answer to both of those questions depends entirely on perspective.  Operationally there is often little thought given to safety instrumented systems until they fail, or require maintenance.  This has led to a misconception that safety instrumented systems, should only be thought about when they fail or require maintenance.  Consequently those same systems are not upgraded or updated as easily or regularly as they would be if they were basic process control systems. 

The mere thought of upgrading a safety instrumented system can strike fear, in the hearts of even the steeliest of Maintenance and Operations Managers.  "Why is this needed?" is the question most often asked.  "Obsolescence" is the most common answer.  In most cases neither the Maintenance nor Operations Manager had any idea that the safety instrumented systems in their facility were more than twenty years old, and as such had reached the end of useful life.  What is more common is that these systems fail outright, causing a spurious trip.  The instrumentation and controls department is now left with the task of repairing a system for which parts may or may not be available.

Safety and Reliability or Reliability and Safety, these two concepts fit "hand-in-glove" and yet we continue to see organizations who perform the periodic proof testing without giving much thought to other primary reliability concepts, such as end of life replacement, or performance review.  The primary reason is that modifying the safety instrumented systems invokes a review and revision of the performance calculations (safety integrity level validation) and safety requirements specification, which in many cases means bringing in a consultant to conduct those reviews, and update or create the required documentation. 

Wouldn't it be easier to manage all of that paperwork and documentation ourselves, and do all of that in one place?   Planning for end of life replacement could be done proactively allowing the engineering group to select the most applicable and best suited components.  This way technological advances would trickle down to the safety instrumented systems at the same rate as they do for the basic process control systems.  Beyond the cost efficiencies associated with proactive lifecycle management this would allow people to better understand not only the role of the safety instrumented system, but also their own role as "steward" of pro-active safety lifecycle management.

Jennifer  Dloughy is a Washington, D.C.-based reporter who covers energy and other issues for The Houston Chronicle and other Hearst newspapers.

In her July 23, 2012 blog entry titled, "Report says offshore industry falls short on key safety monitoring" she reports:

"After the lethal explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers in 2005, the oil industry boosted safety at industrial operations on land but never made the same improvements offshore, according to federal investigators meeting in Houston this week."

Reliability is about failure mode and maintenance is about work process with the fate of one inextricably link to the other.  Process safety management protects people, the planet, AND profits.  For more about what the Chemical Safety Board has to say about risk management follow this link to the CSB youtube channel.  Here is the latest video on the topic of The Future of Risk Reduction.