HollyFrontier: Defining asset management key to reliability

Noting its five independent refineries, HollyFrontier Corp. Maintenance Manager Matthew Shores recognizes the company isn't one of "the biggest players" in the petrochemical industry, but it seeks to be among the most strategic.

"The challenge we have is that, among our refineries, we have about eight crew units, and we're doing as much as 500,000 barrels per day," he said. "But we're never going to compete on our cost per barrel or energy efficiency. That's just not the kit we have."

Another challenge facing the company as it focuses on continually improving quality and productivity, Shores said, is aligning the various backgrounds, cultures and standards that run throughout those five refineries.

"For example, it took us almost nine years to be integrated before operations on both sides had the same shift changes. There are cultural challenges when you're dealing with people's lives. That's the reality," Shores said at the 10th Annual Chem/Petrochem and Refinery Asset Reliability Conference held recently in Houston.

Shores said company leaders also recognize that in order to optimize competitiveness, "one of the knobs we need to turn, for sure, is improving reliability and asset management."

Examining what asset management meant to HollyFrontier, Shores said the company first focused on "people, process and equipment -- not necessarily just the training development, but do we have the right work structure? Are we doing the right things? Do we have the right development plans in place?"

In terms of process, "which is not necessarily just operational processes, but work processes," Shores said leaders analyzed structure, procedures and policies, and then focused on making sure all of their refineries were fitted with the proper equipment.

Standardization was a priority as leaders focused on asset reliability, Shores noted, "but not so much to where people don't have the ability to innovate and be flexible. We said we wanted to standardize, but with some autonomy."

When workers are free to innovate and have engagement, they feel more empowered, he said.

"We're trying to balance that flexibility," Shores said.

It was essential, he added, that HollyFrontier adopt a more structured approach to proactive asset management.

"We've been primarily focused on managing assets around project management and maintenance projects, but we weren't really doing it in the holistic sense that is asset management itself," Shores explained. "Our decision making needed to be better. We wanted to do more risk- and value-based decision making."

Five-year 'flight plan'

HollyFrontier's asset management strategy includes a five-year "flight plan," Shores said.

The plan calls for creating an asset strategy development guide; collaborating across all departments; estimating department resource demands; and integrating milestones of other big initiatives, including turnarounds, process hazard analyses , corporate initiatives and risk registers.

The final element of the plan is to forecast future capital and expense spending "the best we can to help our capital projects group know what's coming down the pipe," Shores said.

It's never too early for decision-makers to consider reliability, he noted, especially on capital projects.

"The term used to be 'cradle to grave.' Everyone's probably heard that," Shores said. "Well, by the time it's in the cradle, it's already installed, so we started saying, 'Lust to dust.' When it's a sparkle in a process engineer's eye, that's when you have to start thinking about reliability decisions -- early on."