The Technical stop in industrial plants it is a special case of systematic maintenance to be properly managed, aiming to increase and improve the functionality of your equipment and production capacity of your company.
What will you find in this post?
- A stop of industrial plants requires specialized companies and a high level of organization
- The 5 most common reasons for a plant shutdown
- The main advantage of our scheduled technical shutdowns
- Why is it important to properly plan a plant shutdown?
- What is planning a stop?
- It gives the suitable preparation of the work scheduled
- The link between the various tasks in a plant shutdown
- Our proven experience in technical shutdowns
A stop of industrial plants requires specialized companies and a high level of organization
In IDI We are trying to conceive Technical stop as a project with a plan to detail a set of jobs that can not be performed during normal operation of the processing plant.
These jobs can be the replacement of equipment or components by maturity of its life, the inspection of facilities and equipment, incorporating enhancements, or bug fixes. These are all tasks that require a lot of resources.
The plant shutdown provides an extraordinary opportunity to intervene facility assets they are generally not available during normal operation. We took advantage of the brief period of downtime to carry out shutdowns, which usually may also be motivated by issues related to security.
In this sense, our experience in this service we have found that the loss of production during a plant shutdown can be retrieved by the superior functionality that is subsequently reaches it.
We also know that these projects require in most cases of external companies specialized in this field, which can provide a large number of qualified personnel, as well as specific tools and means industrial engineer.
A stop is a critical activity in the life of a facility and requires a high level of organization. It opens a lot of teams, they go through a technical review, They repaired, reassembled and launched.
Cost, duration and effectiveness with which all jobs that may involve a technical stop running are transcendental.
The 5 most common reasons for a plant shutdown
The technical stops scheduled maintenance may be motivated by any of the following top 5 reasons explained below:
1 # preventative maintenance system
Generally speaking, the Preventive Maintenance It is carried out in facilities for safety reasons or production must operate reliably for long periods of time.
2 # Corrective maintenance scheduled
In the case of Corrective maintenance It is the correction of a fault which motivates the realization of a scheduled stop. It may be faults, despite its severity, it can postpone its correction to find the right time for Technical stop. Given that these failures may affect facilities that take them out of service may result in the shutdown of the plant for not being duplicated.
If it's about failures easily accessible itemsSuch as repairs boilers, furnaces, tanks, reactors or other external elements these stops They can last between 1 and 5 days. However if it is major repairs inaccessible elements that require large takedowns, repairs They can last for weeks or even months.
3 # The inspections or technical tests, not both routine maintenance, but conditional maintenance.
Roadworthiness tests are conducted mainly to ensure that the most important facility equipment are in good condition.
inspections They are programmed and may include functional tests. Usually they do not require major disassembly as it is checking the status of a part of the installation or performing certain tests that require the shutdown of the plant system.
They tend to be short stops that usually do not exceed weeklongFor example, we mean the time to reach a temperature or a pressure in an area, the time required inspection or the system reset period.
4 # The implementation of major technical revisions scheduled
The technical reviews scheduled are carried by operating hours, for predetermined time periods or per unit produced, among other criteria.
5 # The implementation of improvements in equipment installations
Technological innovation sometimes involves the development of improvements implemented at the facility involves an increase in production capacity, solving a technical problem or reliability, increased performance and energy savings.
In practice several of them are combined in the same technical stopFor example a stop for reasons of corrective maintenance can be used to make small improvements in equipment or minor technical inspections.
The main advantage of our scheduled technical shutdowns
1 # The undisputed increased availability
This is a clear advantage given that availability values above 90% are possible only in industrial installations subject to severe technical reviews planned and carried out systematically.
Why is it important to properly plan a plant shutdown?
Yes one Technical stop in an industrial plant not properly planned and organized it can bring several setbacks associated particularly important for the following reasons:
1# In a very short space of time attempting to perform a large number of interventions that must be perfectly prepared.
2# At one stop we have no regular staff on the ground, which can not be sufficiently technically trained for these interventions. That is why the company or companies engaged for a stop plant must be chosen carefully, making sure that can provide the required qualified personnel.
3# The possibility of accidents increases so a very important part of plant shutdown project we conducted in IDI It is to ensure safety in all work to be performed. From checking the necessary training of personnel intervene, the study of the possible risks that exist during the development of these works, to the state of equipment and tools to be used.
4# In many companies the maintenance stop is an essential activity, since certain teams can not stop their activity except at certain times. In this sense, a mistake made in these cases is to run in those days interventions that can be performed at any time, not just during the pit stop.
What is planning a stop?
The definition of the critical path is the most important task in a plant shutdown
For us one of the keys when properly plan a stop, regardless of its size, it is maximum simplification.
IDI is very important to consider all the activities to be developed, since the delay of either can trigger delay the whole project. However, it may also be the case that a particular delay does not influence and serve to allocate more resources needed for other activities. This is because not all activities have the same degree of influence in the advancement or delay of draft technical stop.
So in all technical stops must define the critical path, Understood as the set of linked tasks that determine the duration of the project. If you want to reduce the project duration it is also necessary to reduce the duration of some of the tasks that make up the critical path.
Critical path management is the most important task, and is perhaps almost the only one responsible for the assigned Technical stop. This is to ensure that each phase is carried out without delay to be terminated, the critical task at hand.
The critical path management of a stop includes 4 phases to take into account:
- Identifying the critical path.
- Time optimization of each of the critical tasks.
- Check that the critical path has not changed after optimization.
- Subordination of other tasks the critical path.
Proper preparation of work scheduled
To ensure compliance with the timelines provided at stops is very important the initial preparation phase. Tasks must be properly planned, the critical path and have all the necessary resources to carry out scheduled jobs. It is therefore crucial to ensure the following key points:
1# Availability of skilled labor needed for each job. In addition to checking that all staff have the requirements to start the work assigned (administrative requirements, contracts, safety training, etc.)
2# Ensure that all qualified personnel involved in the work known exactly the task that needs to run.
3# All required materials must be ground before starting work. They should be well in advance on the premises if the technical review of the materials received did not meet the required specifications.
4# The availability of all necessary means to perform the requested technical stop.
5# Validate that have requested all necessary work permits and have taken all safety measures required.
In phase preparatory work It is very important to discriminate scheduled tasks that can be performed before and during plant shutdown. Everything that can be done to stop pre-supposes a liberating resources that can leverage later.
The link between the various tasks in a plant shutdown
It is the point that usually generates more timeouts in a technical stop. And in the case of the link between tasks that are included in the critical path it requires even more of our attention.
It is one of the tasks responsible for stopping the check at all times that the next task will be performed immediately after the previous one, avoiding at all costs the unwanted downtime.
Our proven experience in technical shutdowns
IDI We specialize in detailed engineering for chemical and pharmaceutical industry and have proven experience programming and directing recognized technical stops Industrial plants.
The whole experience that we have accumulated allows us to anticipate as many contingencies that we have advanced in this post, advising our clients on the best suppliers, and generate all Technical documentation required for a stop at the best possible conditions.
We recently participated in scheduled technical shutdowns of major companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector, we highlight Azko Nobel , B Brown , Total Petrochemical Iberian or Merquinsa, among others.
contact with us so we can advise you personally about technical stops highly experienced and adapted to the specific needs of an industrial plant.