Proactive Lopc Indicator Critical Analysis through Power BI Dashboard

This work applies Power BI dashboard in order to proceed a critical analysis of proactive loss of primary containment indicator so that possible process problems can be detected before greater events occur by prognoses and decision-making to direct resource management in a more assertive way.

A process safety event is an unplanned or uncontrolled release of any material including non-toxic and non-flammable materials from a process, or an undesired event or condition that under slightly different circumstances could have resulted in a release of material (API 754). The pyramid model can represent the predictive relationship between lower and higher events.

It is important to guarantee the good register of pyramid base events (Tier 3) to achieve enough information, identify the fail installation’s weakness, avoid higher process safety events, reduce losses and improve the facility performance. Nevertheless, the only register is not enough to achieve these improvements. Its’s necessary to quantify and analyze the data to guide the decision-making. A critical analysis involves the following parameters: leaked product, fail causes, equipment that failed, engineer discipline, LOPC location, consequences.

The first step to make the critical analysis is having a reliable database. This step involves training the operational team in leading and lagging process safety indicators and process safety management. The communication must be direct and clear. Furthermore, it is necessary to provide a satisfactory registration platform with the necessary fields to carry out the subsequent critical analysis.

After that, it is possible to extract all the information to proceed the proactive LOPC indicator critical analysis. At this point Business Intelligence (BI) presents itself as an adequate tool. Power BI, from Microsoft, is one of the most prominent BI tools. It is a collection of software services, applications and connectors that work together to consolidate, make information from different data sources coherent, visually engaging and interactive (from an Excel spreadsheet to a cloud-based data collection).

Through the LOPC critical analysis using Power BI dashboard it is possible to evaluate the Tier 3 incidents, focused on developing a learning approach. Therefore, it is possible to prevent and monitor failures trends and effectiveness of implemented actions. The critical analysis permits to direct the resource management by identifying the equipment and systems with recurrent failure events. It is worth mentioning the effective contribution for Process Safety Culture, since the leadership, operation and related areas could see the cause-effect relationships between the minor events and the daily operations.