(64ah) A Dynamic Duo of MOC Metrics - Using Quality and Age Scores to Drive Continuous Improvement of Management of Change Process

Most chemical companies that have implemented a management of change (MOC) process are committed to continuously improving the process.  Knowing how to measure and communicate MOC improvement progress can be difficult.  Many common MOC metrics are labor intensive to generate, measures of the mechanics of the process rather than the outcome, focused on individual parts of the process rather than the whole, and/or difficult to understand easily.

Cabot has implemented an MOC audit process that uses a simplified scoring methodology to measure the quality of individual MOC requests.  Scores are determined for three stages of an MOC request: before approval, before startup, and before completion.  These scores are used to calculate the overall quality score for the MOC request.  Then the individual MOC scores can be rolled up into an MOC quality score for the site.

In addition, Cabot developed an easily calculated single-number site MOC age score to measure whether MOC requests are being completed in a timely manner.  The age score complements the quality score since time and quality are sometimes seen as trade-offs.

This paper will describe the methods used to calculate each metric.  It will also address how to adapt the metrics to other businesses and/or goals.  In addition, some implementation suggestions based on Cabot’s experience will be provided.

These two metrics give each site the ability to easily track their MOC process.  Although they do not communicate everything about the MOC process, the metrics are good indicators of the overall health of the process. Due to other concurrent improvement efforts, it is difficult to determine the direct impact of improving the MOC scores on Cabot’s overall process safety performance.  However, the business that originally implemented the metrics has experienced 50% fewer process safety events in the current fiscal year as compared to last fiscal year which was the first full year of the MOC metrics being in place.