Passion, Preparation, and Perseverance are Important for a Reliability Program

Recently I rode with a group of friends completing the 4 Corners Motorcycle Ride from San Ysidro, California; to Key West, Florida; to Madawaska, Maine; to Blaine, Washington; and back to San Ysidro. This was a 12,734 mile ride over 7 weeks. While I won’t be climbing any more mountains in Nepal, I experienced the same challenges on the ride and they relate to the challenges you face implementing or improving your reliability programs.

Passion is a key element of any sound reliability program and was a key element for the ride. The leaders of the program as well as all personnel in the plant must have passion to improve. They must believe all failures are preventable or predictable and have the passion and experience to drive programs and funding through management or staff resistance.

The passionate reliability champion will be convincing, technically sound and know how to build small victories into a world class program.

Preparation is also a key element of your programs. We began preparation for this trip a year in advance. Routes, cost estimates, start dates for optimum weather, target miles per day, fatigue, contingencies, points of interest, total ride duration, camping equipment, emergency considerations and motorcycle maintenance points had to be considered. This kind of planning, funding, scheduling and contingencies need to be a part of your program. While you could just jump on your bike and head out, or pull the plug on a unit for a turnaround without a complete plan, your chance of success is limited without significant planning and preparation.

The development of your plant’s current state is critical to any reliability program. For example:

1. What is the skill level of the reliability staff?
2. Are there adequate resources?
3. What is the state of your inspection program? Is there adequate, qualified staff or are you behind in basic piping, vessel and tank inspections?
4. Do you have management support and funding?
5. Performing an extensive evaluation of the current state will help generate the pathway to action which will show cost and timing to achieve the goals.

We do a significant number of Turnaround Readiness reviews and Risk Based Scope Evaluations as well as Project Stage Gate Reviews. All of this work is geared to give the client a picture of their state of preparation prior to execution of major event. This process has greatly enhanced client performance and efficiency. The evaluations of the current state can allow a pathway to action be developed.

Perseverance was necessary for us to be successful. Although we were having fun, it took perseverance to ride 200 to 500 miles a day and endure temperatures from 39 degrees to 103 degrees.

Your reliability program will face challenges from equipment failures to budget cuts. The reliability champion must be able to face these challenges and demonstrate the most cost effective operation is reliable operation.

To get some more  food for thought about improving your reliability program, visit  https://becht.com/plant-services/turn-around/. Hopefully this blog has inspired you to take on a new adventure!