According to Richard Ellis, improvement leader, global maintenance IT, for The Dow Chemical Company, "There is no change without progress, but there is no progress without change."
Flint Hills Resources' Director of Reliability Cindy Gross, left, and The Dow Chemical Company's Improvement Leader, Global Maintenance IT, Richard Ellis.
That simple statement is an apt response to those who resist change within their companies, especially when it comes to the adoption of new technologies to enhance productivity, safety and overall success.
"The key thing we talk about in terms of reliability is safety, and technology helps with that," Ellis said on a panel discussing how technology improves reliability at the Chem/ Petrochem and Refining Asset Reliability Conference held recently in Houston.
Noting that drones can be particularly effective in enhancing safety when used in confined space entry, Ellis said Dow has set a corporate goal to eliminate all confined space entries by 2025.
"At our major site in Freeport last year, there was an edict from the site director that said confined spaced entry by humans is an exception, and you have to prove to maintenance leadership or health and safety leadership why you had to send a human in instead of a drone or a robot. It's a corporate objective."
Ellis cited the advantages of drone technology in the commissioning and startup of the company's Gulf Coast projects.
"We had 65-inch suction piping on our compressor train, and that was all done with a drone. We didn't send anybody in," he said. "With a compressor, you don't want big stuff -- not even sand -- so we sent drones in." Drones are also effective in infrared and other inaccessible internal inspection areas like a stack or a column, Ellis added.
Cindy Gross, director of reliability for Flint Hills Resources, joined Ellis on the panel and observed that, in addition to drone technology, the use of sensors is becoming more widely accepted.
"Sensors are getting so cheap and so high in quality that you just put the permanent sensor on and use that, because it can now see thicknesses feet from the sensor," she said.
Establishing the 'value case'
Ellis also addressed how to best convince leadership that new technological tools are needed to improve productivity, reliability and other essential components of success. He touted the importance of illustrating the "value case," adding that, when a company is trying to implement different kinds of technology, identifying various challenges and what causes them is essential to overcoming those challenges.
"It's not a challenge when value is identified," Ellis said.
Ellis explained that building the value case to justify the cost of implementing technology depends on identifying how the technology will be applied. "From an IT perspective, they call it the 'use case,'" he said. It is necessary to define not only the use case for the desired technology, but also the functional requirements that new software or the technology will provide. "That's when you start visiting with the vendors to understand what the vendor capabilities are," Ellis said. "The vendors will commit to all kinds of stuff that they claim they can do, but it's difficult to choose the technology when you don't have a set of functional requirements."
"Where have you used this technology and generated the biggest value case, or which of the technologies have generated the most value?" he asked.
As an example of making the value case, Ellis pointed to the advantage of using drones for flare-tip inspection, or for the inspection of the tip of any elevated surface.
"Have you ever been in a man basket to do inspections at the end of a crane? It is not fun," Ellis said. "How can I keep a person from having to go in there? If you go back to your leadership, they'll recognize that's a safety and reliability issue. There's that safety component."
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