There are a number of systems and tools that companies employ to manage capital investment and develop strategies to sustain reliability within their budgets.
Roger da Rosa Godolphim, investments project manager for Braskem.
One of those tools that supports the decision to make a replacement investment, according to Roger da Rosa Godolphim, investments project manager for Braskem, is a "repo investment."
"You decide what equipment is obsolete and then you decide to buy a new one, but sometimes this is not an easy decision for the engineering team," Godolphim said, adding that the tool helps decision makers avoid some anxious feelings about their options.
He likened the process to replacing a car.
"We want to have a new or better car. It's the same with the guys in the field," Godolphim said in a presentation at the 9th Annual Chem/Petrochem and Refining Asset Reliability Conference held recently in Houston. "They want to have a better compressor, the newest one on the market. We put in some information about the old equipment, some information about the new equipment."
The repo investment tool will then "make the decision" whether it's better to maintain the existing equipment or to invest in new equipment, and personnel "don't have to do anything else," Godolphim said.
Godolphim noted Braskem has 10 multidisciplinary groups, including the pyrolysis furnace, large machines, electrical systems, industrial wastes efficiency, dilution steam, physical losses, energy efficiency, steam systems, caustic systems and oil/water separators.
"We have a reliability group that operations goes to -- operations engineers, process engineers -- all of these disciplines are discussed in all these systems," Godolphim said. "Each group does three presentations per year for managers, engineers and technicians involved with the issues."
Meeting notes are then sent to managers, engineers and technicians.
Godolphim said his company also applies a predictive strategy that consists of predictive systems leveling, focusing on predictive maintenance, identifying critical systems and bad actors, developing failure modes algorithms for critical equipment families from FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis) and other methods, monitoring equipment to prescriptively analyze the outcomes and, ultimately, make decisions.
"This is how we decide what project we're going to do and where we're going to invest," Godolphim said.
The digital transformation factor
"Everybody's talking about it and how we're going to do the IoT on our machines and how these machines are going to operate," Godolphim said of digital transformation in predictive maintenance and deliverables.
The objective is to leverage the asset predictive maintenance strategy and, by intensively using new diagnostic and monitoring technologies, update its work processes, leading to an increase in reliability and maintenance cost reduction, Godolphim explained.
Godolphim then referred to a recent video produced by GE that shows a turbine talking about the problems and what the turbine's going to do.
"This is what we're trying to do with some equipment," Godolphim said. "We are choosing some cases in our plants to go through this, so we are going to have a multiyear plan for that."
The multiyear plan consists of maintenance processes that identify gaps in "as-is" processes and generate "to-be" or future recommendations and expected benefits of those recommended changes.
The plan's "people management" aspect addresses the current scenario and change recommendations, as well as a training and capabilities development plan.
"Then we'll have proof of value in these cases for the next year," Godolphim said.
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