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Automation optimum potential. That is where Shell’s where you can see the degree of severity rotating machinery, there needs to be a

Bridge team comes into play, so they and the degree of degradation as well.” way to determine criticality,” Grabill said. can use automation technology to ? x the “Criticality sets up the priority in which

Reliability trend small problems. you going to put together your reliability

The use of the reliability technology Right now, equipment ends up instru- strategies. Criticality can come in different helps alleviate the problems that opera- mented for two things: safety, where it ways, there is a structured way of doing tors have learned the hard way. connects to shutdown systems, and for that by virtue of understanding the in? u-

The new technology allows them to ence of each asset on safety, environment, con? gure their systems to understand production, volume, cost to maintain, and where past problems cropped up. “They yields. There are a number of factors that are continually adding additional rules can place in the criticality equation with and algorithms to monitor and look for the number of in? uences it has on the different kinds of or new conditions,” business and safety. The second thing is to

Winters said. take the criticality and ? gure out what to do with it.” That is where the user under-

Remote reliability stands the failure mode.

“The whole idea

Monitoring systems is not just a one per- The next move is to ? gure out what son proposition, and as Shell determined, equipment to build the reliability strategy behind remote it takes a large cast. That is why remote around. “I will build these strategies monitoring is monitoring is playing a bigger part in the from maintenance analysis, root cause reliability picture moving forward. from past failures, and from just common to head off any “We are doing two deployments in the sense,” Grabill said. “Once you under-

North Sea and both of those are mov- stand the failure modes, you ask if you issues for the ing to a remote operations scenario,” can afford to put the mitigation strategies

Winters said. “Their goal is to reduce the in place, like real time condition moni- critical assets” amount of bodies on the platform, one of toring, preventive maintenance sched- the implications is they will have fewer ules, operator monitoring. There is a cost maintenance people on the platform. bene? t to each one of those depending

When they are sending someone to the control. There is signi? cant amount of on the impact of the failure modes to the platform they can know which poten- instrumentation already on the equip- business and the longevity of the equip- tial instruments are having problems, ment, but one trend is seeing additional ment. Once I have the failure modes and what pumps are having problems, instrumentation for maintenance and identi? ed and the strategy built I have they can be more proactive around that reliability. to implement the strategy, which can be and do better maintenance scheduling. “The challenge is how do you pull complex. What you are doing is transfer-

Technology is bringing in health informa- all that disparate data as it relates to the ring the failure modes into actions. tion from the smart instruments, electri- performance and health on a piece of “Get the work process around to take cal systems, rotating equipment, and equipment and translate it to what the the failure modes with the criticality and choke valves. That is one way to be more real-time health indicator is for that piece the degradation signals and put them in proactive around optimizing the wrench of equipment,” Winters asked. where we can build some intelligence time when going out to the platform.” “You need a central repository and a and experience into the system, then

The whole idea behind remote moni- focal point for bringing that data in to we can send a signal to the operations, toring of equipment on the platform is to assess the overall equipment health,” he reliability and maintenance guys to say head off any issues for the critical assets. said. “In the past you would have a vibra- I have critical equipment up there, but and compare that to the last 15min aver- “What you are able to see is a rate of tion monitoring system that was separate what is the most critical impending deg- age and if they see a spike or a sudden degradation on any of the equipment from performance monitoring, which was radation taking place that I need to pay change, that will trigger a surveillance on what you characterized as the failure separate from the control system. If you attention to today, or the next week? That task and a group of engineers comes in modes and how you have characterized had high vibration, the vibration tech intelligence needs to be built into this and investigates what might be caus- the degradation mechanisms,” said Stan would not know what the compressor whole work process.”

Understanding the reliability equation ing that sudden change. Preventing a Grabill, principal reliability consultant or pump was doing at the time of high that allows equipment to communicate the catastrophic compressor failure is worth at HPS. “So, it is not just seeing it hours vibration. Having it all together in one nuances of the dynamic offshore environ- about $4 million to them. In another before it fails, but rather getting early place you can see that yes, I have high ment means engineers can make decisions case if they trip a compressor and have indications or early event detection. In vibration but I was running the unit hard before small problems escalate. an event ? aring for a four-hour period in some cases we can have an interven- so I can understand, or we had low ? ow, downtime, it can save them multiple mil- tion without severe degradation or can which means I had a cavitation issue.” lions of dollars.” recover the degradation with some Gregory Hale is the

Program fundamentals

Tom Moroney, manager of deepwater proactive maintenance. You can accumu- Editor and Founder technology and geosciences at Shell late this information across an array of It is fundamental to have a methodology of Industrial Safety spoke at the Honeywell User Group in assets whether they are electrical rotating to determine criticality of equipment and and Security Source

June 2013 about the hike in technical machinery, heat exchanger performance, your system in order to have a good reli- (ISSSource.com) and and business complexity along with the where you get input on performance ability program. is the Contributing workforce demographics and techniques you can see anything that is starting to “Regardless of the asset, whether it is Automation Editor at on utilizing the resources they had to the go south on you. The software is set up instrumentation, process equipment and Offshore Engineer.

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