Digital Exclusive: Managing reliability and asset management performance in the Yanbu refinery through the implementation of a reliable operations committee program

The oil and gas industry is extremely important to the global economy, satisfying a significant portion of total global energy demand. However, the industry operates in a complex environment with many challenges, including fluctuations in economies, operational hazards and many others. Focusing on improving the reliability performance within processing facilities plays a vital role in sustaining the complex’s efficiency and safety. In this context, reliability refers to the ability for equipment or a system to carry out its function without failure over a specified period by ensuring that all components are operating safely and efficiently under several operational conditions, reducing the plant’s downtime and minimizing unplanned maintenance activities.

According to Gulati, “Improving reliability is essential to the success of any organization, particularly to its operation and maintenance. Understanding reliability and maintenance and how they’re interrelated are the basis for reducing the lifecycle costs of assets and plants.”¹

Recent studies show that there are significant costs incurred due to unplanned downtime. Deloitte estimated that such unplanned outages cost companies approximately $50 B/yr.² Applying practical and appropriate reliability and asset management principles and programs can help minimize unplanned outages. This can be accomplished by employing predictive and preventive maintenance strategies in the processing facility. A McKinsey study³ showed that enhancing the reliability in plants can help reduce unplanned downtime by up to 20%.

One of the most important aspects in having successful reliability and asset management performance is to establish a tracking mechanism to monitor, control and manage key performance indicator (KPI) performance, which is the focus of this article.

Authors such as John Moubray (Reliability-Centered Maintenance) and John D. Campbell (Maintenance Excellence: Optimizing Equipment Life-Cycle Decision), among others, have emphasized the importance of establishing tracking mechanisms for KPIs, as it is considered a cornerstone of successful reliability and maintenance strategies. In this regard, KPIs relate to widely used indicators in the field of reliability—e.g., mean time between failure (MTBF). Such tracking mechanisms equip organizations with the ability to recognize patterns of failures in their equipment and validate the efficiency of their established maintenance strategies and programs.

In order for companies to sustain their performance and growth, and have continuous improvement and success in their business, they must ensure that they have established feasible programs in which they can track, monitor, measure and analyze their processing facilities’ performances through the development of practical reliability and asset management KPIs that will result in enhancing the company’s sustainability and meet their visions, missions and goals as an organization.

In this technical article, Saudi Aramco’s Reliable Operations Committee (ROC) program is presented to showcase one of the best practices being followed at the Yanbu refinery. The ROC meeting is a high-level gathering—chaired by the plant director—conducted quarterly to examine critical reliability, maintenance and asset management programs and KPIs. The primary goals of the ROC program are to oversee the implementation of maintenance and reliability programs and performance to ensure an optimum reliability culture and endorse new initiatives and programs to enhance maintenance performance in the facility. Most importantly, the facility will be able to identify gaps and low-performing KPIs (leading/lagging) and subsequently search for resolutions and rectifications of these gaps through a solid review of multi-discipline teams, as well as through benchmarking of other internal facilities to overcome obstacles (FIG. 1). The process of establishing ROC content and data for KPIs, and monitoring and controlling the KPIs will be explained in this article.

FIG. 1. Flowchart of the ROC program.

Data monitoring and analysis. Within engineering, maintenance and operations teams, certain KPIs are assigned and determined by the Reliability and Asset Management Group. The KPIs are separated into four focus areas:

1. Reliability culture and leadership
2. Reliability and integrity programs
3. Operational integrity
4. Continuous improvement.

Each focus areas will contain several related KPIs, which will be reviewed and evaluated during the meeting. In this article, two KPIs in each focus area are provided as an example (FIG. 2).

FIG. 2. KPIs of each focus area.

Tangible impact. There are many cases where it was obvious that such performance tracking and monitoring improved plant reliability. For example, one case was the improvement in the critical equipment out-of-service KPI, where it was noted that certain rotating equipment had repeated failures and historically had multiple corrective maintenance work orders. Accordingly, the Reliability and Asset Management Group, alongside a multi-discipline team, conducted a complete investigation to improve the situation. A list of actions items was carried out by the team, which resulted in a significant improvement in the related KPI and related equipment. The team benchmarked with other process facilities that had experienced similar cases. In addition, the team conducted an intensive review and evaluation on all related data and details from the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to look for root causes. Furthermore, the team also worked on the optimization and redevelopment of the related asset maintenance strategies after completing a detailed asset criticality assessment (ACA) for related equipment. As a result, the team issued a recommendation and continued to track the performance of this KPI, leading to operational improvement.

Takeaway. The ROC program has provided the Yanbu facility with significant advantages by availing the opportunity of tracking and observing the facility’s reliability and maintenance performance through well-defined reliability-focused areas and a number of KPIs. The program will continue to support the facility in sustaining reliable operations and meeting corporate vision and goals.

LITERATURE CITED

¹ Gulati, R., Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices, 2^nd Ed., Industrial Press, August 2012.

² Coleman, C., et al., Making maintenance smarter: Predictive maintenance and the digital supply network, Deloitte University Press, April 2017, online: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/3828_Making-maintenance-smarter/DUP_Making-maintenance-smarter.pdf

³ Decaix, G., et al., “A smarter way to digitize maintenance and reliability,” McKinsey and Co., April 23, 2021, online: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/a-smarter-way-to-digitize-maintenance-and-reliability

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