Technical Drive at Maintenance Pillars (TPM) to Boost PS Performance

Ecolab, a global chemical manufacturer is keen to improve their Process Safety performance with a deeper understanding around LOPC / Injuries resulted from failed hardware. Site/regional wide metrics pointing to the failures from process equipment by lapsed maintenance program as major contributor.

TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) Pillar strategy is implemented at most of our manufacturing facilities to drive a “zero loss culture” and to improve safety, reduce operating costs, increase quality, and maximize equipment reliability.

The objective of the presentation is to share the challenges, success factors and benefits of synergizing critical equipment programs along with Autonomous and Preventive maintenance pillars without compromising their objectives and criticalities via a Technical Network.

The maintenance strategy provides a means to manage assets, resources and processes; track, measure and analyze data; and promote continuous improvement while being integrated with Process Safety, Productivity and Quality.

Sites implemented PM tasks via TPM, encountered several challenges such as employees treating Mechanical Integrity Program activities as additional work, insufficient understanding of the methodology and philosophy of critical equipment test implementation, lack of skillsets, lack of upper management support in some cases, lack of commitment, insufficient resources among others.

A Technical Network team is chartered with an objective to promote ownership, leverage their visibility, speed up the deployment, focus around the major losses and to hold the gains.

Network team roll out,

• Technical training programs to build process safety information (reading/ updating P&IDs, compilation of equipment specifications, maintenance procedures, basic principles of Equipment, etc.)
• Guidance for PM Strategy such as maintenance database (restoration, update equip lists, classification and failure seriousness), PM Tasks and Execution, Maintenance KPI and target Setting and overall Pillar Deployment support.

The success factors for the Technical Network were predominantly from top management commitment, effective communication and support from the shop floor, training of operators in basic maintenance skills were among others.

Elimination of waste and losses, reduction of equipment breakdown, reduction of safety incidents, reduction of maintenance costs, optimization of equipment reliability, improvement of operator skills, boosting morale of employees, among the benefits.

In the current competitive market, manufacturing firms stand to benefit greatly by adapting TPM as a performance improvement tool. Identification and closure of maintenance maturity gaps will enable plants to move from reactive in nature to predictive, anticipating failures before they occur and reliably planning production downtime. Data was analyzed and presented using descriptive statistics

The process is currently being rolled out in Asiapac region and is aimed for global deployment upon approval. This sets one of a good example of effective roll out to uphold safety and profitability for the entire organization.

Bala Raman: Regional Process Safety and Engineering Manager: Asia Pacific, Singapore