Chad Bates, operations and maintenance gatekeeper for BASF, said he believes that, regardless of the task they may be executing, nobody consciously plans to fail. “But if you fail to plan, that’s exactly what you’re going to do,” Bates said on a panel titled “Output vs. reliability: Planning and scheduling of routine maintenance,” at the Downstream Conference and Exhibition, held recently in Galveston, Texas.
While there will always be process interruptions that cannot be avoided, Bates insisted that someone, perhaps from operations or maintenance, should be designated to determine valid schedule-breakers. “You’ve got to have someone in place that’s going to put their foot down and say, ‘No, we’re not going to fix that pump today,’” Bates continued. “Because do you really need it? Can you run it like it is and put it on schedule for next week so you can have the parts available and don’t have to Hotshot the parts? It really saves money in the long run when you follow the plan and you’re not just fighting fires every single day.”
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David Reed, Director of Plant Maintenance for Eastman Chemical (left); Randy Pound, Global Manufacturing Director of Maintenance and Reliability for Olin Corporation; Sri Mattu, Engineering Project Manager for Suncor Energy and Chad Bates, Operations and Maintenance Gatekeeper for BASF
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Sri Mattu, Engineering Project Manager for Suncor Energy (left) and Chad Bates, Operations and Maintenance Gatekeeper for BASF
David Reed, Director of Plant Maintenance for Eastman Chemical; Randy Pound, Global Manufacturing Director of Maintenance and Reliability for Olin Corporation; Sri Mattu, Engineering Project Manager for Suncor Energy and Mohan Sharma, Chief Executive Officer for Prima Strategic Group, Inc. joined Bates on the panel.
This article will appear in its entirety in the September issue of BIC Magazine.
