Hydrocarbon Processing - February 2021 - 18

Digital

O. PLOWMAN
Actenum Corp., Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Optimize plant turnarounds with
AI-powered software
How much time and costs can be saved
by scheduling with an AI-powered solution? The numbers are staggering. While
plant shutdowns are a necessary part of
life, they can either be a positive activity
that increases productivity or a negative
one if the shutdown exceeds its deadline
and goes beyond the budget.
Plant shutdowns are often required
by federal and state governing agencies
to prevent accidents and ensure that the
plant is running within stated regulations.
Time is money, so site-specific plans are
key when implementing a safe and effective shutdown. Additionally, many facilities are inspected during shutdowns and
if issues are uncovered, the shutdown is
extended and costs are increased.
Plant shutdown activities can last
from a few weeks to even months. These
activities require a combination of labor
and equipment that is well-orchestrated to
complete all tasks in as short a time as possible and get operations back online in a
timely matter at the least cost. AI-powered
software allows managers to schedule and

optimize thousands of activities and hundreds of resources automatically and rapidly, and quickly re-sequence the schedule
if any changes occur-all of which save significant time, and time is money, of course.
Everyday challenges. A maintenance

manager's typical day involves scheduling
required maintenance work by assigning
it to the available maintenance crews and
other resources. Over a typical week, a
manager may have to schedule hundreds
of these maintenance activities, some of
which may be critical. What if the software
used to build and manage the maintenance schedules is out of date or unsophisticated? If this is the case, a lot of manual
work will be done, and because there is no
time to carry out the required analysis of
the schedule, many important questions
will go unanswered.
For example, how will maintenance
activities impact production? Can we reduce non-productive time and still complete the work on time, and how much
money will that save? If crew members

FIG. 1. The AI-powered scheduling softwarea delivered predictable performance by aligning
schedules with business rules and constraints, enabling everyone in the organization to benefit
from a complete, single-source view of operations.

FEBRUARY 2021 | HydrocarbonProcessing.com

are out or have medical issues, what will
be the impact on the schedule? Should
work on specific equipment be moved up
to lessen the impact on the plant production? What is the best response to unanticipated events, such as a breakdown or
outage, that we cannot control?
These questions emphasize the need
for maintenance managers to have a higher degree of scheduling automation at
their fingertips and to use software's predictive capabilities to create an effective
and efficient schedule of maintenance
work orders.
Accelerating schedule creation and
management. Recently, a heavy indus-

trial plant utilized a proprietary AI-powered scheduling softwarea to help schedule
a 4-d shutdown at their plant. To ensure
they made the right decision, the plant
shared their schedule in Microsoft Project
and asked if it could be improved upon.
As a response, the AI-powered scheduling
solution was utilized to schedule tasks,
materials and people in an optimal way.
The built-in, AI-powered optimizer rapidly evaluates all available options and
selects the sequence of activities that best
meets user-defined constraints and production targets. The scheduling softwarea
was quickly loaded at the plant in just one
day, enabling the shutdown schedule to
be optimized. Additionally, the software
eliminated the need for multiple applications or spreadsheets and time-consuming manual calculations.
Once it was up and running, the software did the heavy lifting of initial schedule creation (FIG. 1)-searching the set of
activities, resources, sequencing/timing
combinations and preferences/policy requirements to assemble a schedule in far
less time than would be required using
a more manual approach. What might
take days or weeks to complete manually
was done in minutes. Ongoing schedule

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Hydrocarbon Processing - February 2021

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