The Human Factor

Stan: How did you get the plant to open up?

Glenn: We had the process engineer go over the control diagrams, which were between a process flow diagram (PFD) with a skeleton of control schemes, and the piping and instrument diagrams (P&IDs) that had way too much detail. The process engineer often prepared a sketch, since control diagrams are not an official required document. Operations chipped in, and had a chance to talk about what actually happens in the control room. Pointed questions were normally needed to get the right thought process going. It was harder to get at lab-sample and analysis issues since most lab systems were not integrated into the data historian. We looked at on-line trends of process measurements and flows over intelligent time horizons. There was never enough ability to show all the related variables on the same trend or find the right period of operation since there was no automation of cost-sheet-to-trend setup.

Greg: How did you get agreement?

Glenn: I led the discussion where the specialists started to offer ideas. I always looked to the process engineer to qualify or reject the idea. For accepted solutions, a time and resource requirement was estimated by the plant process control engineer, and a ball park percentage of the gap addressed was offered by the process engineer. The results were prioritized based on speed, investment and value. The low hanging fruit were often harvested in the next few days. Longer term effort required follow-up visits and often a revitalization of interest and knowledge.

Stan: What happened to the program?

Glenn: After achieving on the average a 4% reduction in the cost of goods, enthusiasm waned possibly due to a view of the chemical business as a cash cow and the need to save some benefits to justify the migration to the next generation of DCS.

Paul's Top Thirty Signs of an Opportunity Assessment that Has Gone Too Long and Wrong

30. Your laptop computer dies and becomes obsolete.
29. Area operators volunteer to manually shovel out the dryer in a pouring rain and other     horrible duties rather than go one-on-one with the OA team.
28. The plant manager threatens to send you to diversity training if you use one more four-letter word.
27. You start to fantasize about diversity training instead of spending one more minute in the  OA.
26. The plant personnel start referring to the OA team as Moe, Larry and Curley.
25. To avoid sitting through two more hours, the meeting leader volunteers to fly home to snow and rain to chauffeur the kids on Halloween.
24. You start to prefer the smell of chemicals to the smell of the person next to you.
23. You start to name pieces of equipment after team members like "Randy the Reboiler."
22. The operators start showing you photographs of their favorite guns, cousins and livestock.
21. People in the plant characterize the OA team as "Men Behaving Badly."
20. You start to sound like a used car salesperson when trying to describe the benefits of  advanced control.
19. You ditch the meeting to attend an all day-telecom with your boss Bob to become Bob's  best butt boy.
18. You begin each session with a heated argument whether the "No Donuts at Company  Meetings" is real or a fake memo in the rumors database.
17. When the water balance is mentioned, you immediately get up and go to the rest room.
16. When someone mentions decoupling the inventory control from the concentration control,  you start estimating the effect of the 10 Dr. Peppers you had.
15. You find that the "sweet spot" has nothing to do with the process, but is the name of the  chair in the control room without a spring sticking up in the seat.
14. There are more OA participants in the restroom than in the meeting.
13. The solution to every control opportunity is a neural network, expert system or older-than-dirt FORTRAN.
12. You choose the "hot dog special" so the indigestion will keep you awake the rest of the  afternoon.
11. Lunch break becomes known as the "Exodus."
10. You refer to the guy belching on the "hot dog special" as "El Niño.
9.  The servers in the cafeteria chow line start looking good to you.
8.  You have a recurring nightmare in which you build a neural network to inferentially measure an  impurity that is only correlated with your company's stock price.
7.   The pressure and stress of the OA makes you actually consider giving your spouse 55  "You Are Entitled to Be Crabby All Day" coupons.
6.  You sadistically harass the guy next to you by noisily eating an apple when you know he  forgot his banana.
5.  You spend two hours deciding whether to install a $2K analyzer or if a five-year effort to  build a neural network to infer moisture should go into phase II.
4.  You use the term "redneck" to describe the person you told that their implementation  technology is ancient history and belongs in a museum.
3.  You start calling the supervisory control system "Mir."
2.  You spend two weeks working on the OA summary before you realize the process  improvements are the same as the ones from the OA you did five years ago.
1.  The corporate guys get up and leave you behind to defend a briefcase full of "nebulous  crap."