Operations In-charge's Call - Plant Trip

This series of blog titled Indian Story of an Asset Maintenance Manager is dedicated to all my colleagues, engineers, supervisors, technicians working in asset maintenance function of various industries such as operations intensive plant, manufacturing plant, services, etc. I would like to share my industry experience of 24 years and research experience on the subject. The illustrations will not be so technical but will be more on experiential sharing. I request readers to respond to my views and suggestions so that we together can improve the asset maintenance system of Indian Industry to excellence level.

Asset maintenance has been defined  as  the  combination  of  technical  and  associated  administrative  actions  in tended  to  retain  an  item  or  system  in,  or  restore  it  to, a  state  in  which  it  can  perform  its  required  function (ISO 14224:  2004). Further, Dhillion (2002) defined maintenance as all actions appropriate for retaining an item/ part/equipment in or restoring it to, a given condition.

A proper asset maintenance needs technical skills, techniques, methods to properly utilize the assets like factories, power plants, vehicles, equipment and machines. The key objective of asset maintenance is to ensure system function (availability, efficiency and product quality), system life (asset management), and system safety with low energy consumption. Poorly maintained machines or equipment may lead to random breakdowns causing unavailability for production or service.

The preceding paragraphs are defining asset maintenance and its objective. These details are given for reader’s knowledge. As an asset maintenance manager, we need to ensure the healthiness of equipment and to maximize the availability to operations/production.

I am sharing an experience when I was working as a maintenance in-charge for a Gas Processing Plant in Gujarat, India. The day was 25^th June, 2006 (Sunday), my son’s birthday. We decided to go for a dinner at Domino's after a party with all children in our apartments.  After a lunch myself, wife, and my son were taking a nap. I got up after a long ringing of my Sony mobile.

The news was from my operations in-charge. He told that “he was sending the vehicle for picking me to plant”. Reason for that pleasurable trip (?) was gas processing plant got tripped due to gas turbine problem. 

Upon receipt of the above call, I woke up my wife to tell my wife that I was going to plant to attend the turbine problem. My wife’s face got shrunk but she had given me a support “Okay dear, you go attend the plant problem. I will taken care of dinner” (all maintenance engineers/ managers got such a lucky wife? Readers of the blog may share their experience to recognize the sacrifices of our family). That day, I reached back to home around 2 am mid-night.

Let us see as a maintenance manager, how to avoid the above situation for the asset maintenance team. Is every manager working in this lines or they just fire-fight the situation? See you in my next post…Keep sharing your personal experiences… let us bring solutions at later stage.