Equipment Switchover and Overall Utilization Strategy

Abstract In the Oil and Gas industry, there are many different types of facilities, design for different stages in the hydrocarbon processing, comprised by multiple types of equipment in different arrangements, and while most companies share similar processes, facilities, and equipment they also have different visions on how their plants should be designed, how the processes are arranged, and how the equipment should be utilized. During the preliminary design phase of an oil and gas facility, the input/output data is set and the process is licensed, then, the preliminary number of equipment required to fulfilled those process requirements are calculated and set. At this point, the RAM models are created and different scenarios are run to optimize the number of equipment to be installed in order to cover the process targets and also yield the maximum reliability levels to the plant. As result, the facility will have a number of installed machines that can be run in different patterns to meet production rates, while other remain in standby a precautionary measure should any unreliability event happened. Following this logic, at any point in time some machines within a specific service will be running, while the rest are in standby; this fact had generated the need to elect how the machines should be utilized in order to keep them at optimal condition for operation. Whether we refer to the running machines or the idle machine, a solid equipment running philosophy should be developed to ensure every piece of equipment is available and ready to be used when needed. To address this need, different companies in the industry had developed, deployed, and tested different approaches; while some companies assign one or more machines within the group as "Main", to continuously run to cover the duty of the service, similarly, the remaining machines are deemed as "Standby" and they are only used in the event that the main machine(s) are down for maintenance. On the other hand, other companies try to cover the service duty using all installed machines in an alternating running pattern, this approach aims to maintain the equipment reliability and availability by balancing the usage of all machines within same service. Which philosophy is better? Well, that is very hard to answer, given that there have been multiple studies that support one strategy over the other; in this particular case, we will focus on the later, given the fact that for our organization the approach aiming for equipment utilization balance is one of the core objectives of the equipment utilization corporate strategy. It is the objective of this document to present SGPD Equipment Switchover and Overall Utilization Strategy, starting with all the conditions that frame the program as well as the computational tools used to follow, control, and administer the equipment utilization.