Operating within limits

May 2008 Analytical Instrumentation & Environmental Monitoring

Overview

The American Petroleum Institute and the American Chemistry Council have stated: “During the past 30 years, the 100 largest accidents in chemical and hydrocarbon processing facilities have severely injured or killed hundreds of people, contaminated the environment, and caused more than $8 billion in property damage losses. The actual cost of these accidents was in fact much higher when taking into account the associated business interruption costs, cleanup costs, legal fees, fines, losses of market share, etc."

Unfortunately studies also show that human error is a significant factor in almost all of these accidents.

A practical definition of human error is any human action (or lack thereof) that exceeds the tolerances defined by the system with which the human interacts. Human error in processing plants, although not intended, does happen. This is not to say that processing plant employees are unskilled and error-prone, yet they do make mistakes. Why?

Studies by the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium (ASM) have shown that 42% of abnormal situations or upsets in modern-day processing plants are caused by people or their work context. 36% of the upsets stem from equipment problems, with half of the equipment problems attributable to operating equipment or process units outside of their 'operating envelope'. To improve operational reliability and to avoid some of these incidents it is necessary to examine control room operators’ work processes. What tools do they need to run their operations productively and safely? And how do we avoid some of the costly mistakes?

For many companies, Honeywell’s Operations Management suite of tools and services answers this question by enabling best-in-class work practices for control room and field based operators. Operations Management helps operators:

* Establish operating limits for plant processes.

* Validate that operating targets are within specified limits.

* Monitor and control to these targets.

* Communicate and analyse the results as part of a learning and continuous improvement effort.

Perhaps this is best summarised by the fact that Honeywell’s operations management suite of tools and services promotes People Effectiveness.

Read the full article at http://instrumentation.co.za/+C8422a or for more information contact Debbie Rae, Honeywell Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 695 8000, [email protected], www.honeywell.co.za

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