April 2025

Special Focus: Maintenance, Reliability and Inspection

Manage reliability and asset management performance by implementing a reliable operations committee program

This article examines how the author's company instituted a reliable operations committee program at its refinery in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. The main goal of the program is to oversee the implementation and performance of maintenance and reliability programs to ensure a culture of optimum reliability and endorse new initiatives and programs that enhance maintenance performance in the facility.

The oil and gas industry is vital for the global economy, supplying a significant portion of global energy demands. It operates in a complex environment, facing fluctuations in shifting economies, extreme operational hazards, etc. Consistent focus on improving the reliability performance within processing facilities will play a vital role in sustaining efficiency and safety. 

In this context, reliability refers to the ability of equipment or a system to conduct its function without failure over a specified period of time by ensuring that all components are operating safely and efficiently under several operational conditions. This reduces plant downtime and minimizes unplanned maintenance activities. According to Gulati, “Improving reliability is essential to the success of any organization, particularly to its operation and maintenance. Understanding reliability and maintenance and how they are interrelated are the basis for reducing the lifecycle costs of assets and plants.”¹ 

It seems obvious to state, but recent studies confirm that significant costs are incurred due to unplanned downtime. Deloitte estimated that such unplanned outages cost companies ~$50 B annually.² Applying practical and appropriate reliability and asset management principles and programs can help minimize unplanned outages by employing predictive and preventive maintenance strategies throughout the processing facility. A McKinsey study shows that enhancing plant reliability can help to reduce unplanned downtime up to 20%.³ 

One of the most important aspects in successful reliability and asset management performance—and the focus of this article—is establishing a tracking mechanism to monitor, control and manage the performance of key performance indicators (KPIs).  

Authors Moubray⁴, Campbell⁵ and others have emphasized the importance of establishing tracking mechanisms for KPIs: this is considered a cornerstone of successful reliability and maintenance strategies. In this regard, KPIs relate to widely used indicators in the field of reliability [e.g., mean-time between failures (MTBFs)]. Certainly, such tracking mechanisms enable an organization to recognize equipment failure patterns and validate the efficiency of their established maintenance strategies and programs. As renowned revered organizational and management thinker Peter Drucker said, “You cannot manage something you cannot control, and you cannot control something you cannot measure.” 

For companies to sustain their performance and growth, and maintain continuous improvement and success in their business, they must ensure they have established feasible programs in which they can track, monitor, measure and analyze their processing facilities’ performance. This requires the development of practical reliability and asset management KPIs that enhance the company’s sustainability and ensure it meets its organizational visions, missions and goals. 

The Reliable Operations Committee (ROC) program is presented here to highlight the best practices being followed at the author’s company’s Yanbu refinery (FIG. 1). The high-level ROC meeting is chaired by the plant director and conducted on a quarterly basis to review critical reliability, maintenance and asset management programs, and KPIs. The main goal of an ROC program is to oversee the implementation and performance of maintenance and reliability programs to ensure a culture of optimum reliability and endorse new initiatives and programs that enhance maintenance performance in the facility. Most importantly, the organization will identify gaps and low-performing KPI’s (leading/lagging) and subsequently resolve and rectify these gaps through a solid facility review by multi-discipline teams and benchmarking of other internal facilities to overcome obstacles. The process of establishing ROC content and data for KPIs—as well as monitoring and controlling those KPIs—are discussed here. 

FIG. 1. ROC process. 

Data monitoring and analysis. Within engineering, maintenance and operations teams, certain KPIs are assigned as applicable and determined by the reliability and asset management group. The KPIs are separated into four main focus areas: 

1. Reliability culture and leadership 
2. Reliability and integrity programs 
3. Operational integrity 
4. Continuous improvement. 

Each area of focus contains a number of related KPIs that are reviewed and evaluated during the meeting. Two KPIs in each focus area are provided as an example in FIG. 2.  

FIG. 2. Examples of ROC key performance indices.   

Tangible impact. In many cases, it is obvious that such performance tracking and monitoring have improved the reliability within the plant. One case was the improvement in the “critical equipment out-of-service” KPI, where it was noted that certain rotating equipment had repeated failures and historically had multiple corrective maintenance work orders. Accordingly, the reliability and asset management group and a multi-discipline team conducted a complete investigation to remedy the situation. The team conducted a list of actions items—the result was a significant improvement in the related KPI and related equipment. The team benchmarked with other process facilities that had experienced similar cases and conducted intensive review and evaluation on all related data and details from the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to look for root causes. The team also worked on the optimization and redevelopment of the related asset maintenance strategies after completing detailed asset criticality assessment (ACA) for related equipment (FIG. 3). 

FIG. 3. Investigation/resolution process. 

As a result, the team issued its recommendations and continued to track the performance of this KPI until improvement was eventually demonstrated.  

Takeaway. The ROC program has provided the facility with advantages by enabling the tracking and observation of the facility’s reliability and maintenance performance through a well-defined reliability focus areas and a number of KPIs. The program will continue to support the facility in sustaining reliable operations and meeting corporate visions and goals. 

LITERATURE CITED 

1 Gulati, R., Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices (Volume 1), 2nd Ed., Industrial Press Inc., 2013. 

2 Coleman, C., S. Damodaran, M. Chandramoull and E. Deuel, “Making maintenance smarter,” Deloitte Insights, May 9, 2017, online: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/industry-4-0/using-predictive-technologies-for-asset-maintenance.html 

3 Decaix, G., M. Gentzel, A. Luse, P. Neise and J. Thibert, “A smarter way to digitize maintenance and reliability,” McKinsey & Company, April 23, 2021, online: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/a-smarter-way-to-digitize-maintenance-and-reliability 

4 Moubray, J., Reliability-centered maintenance, 2nd Ed., Industrial Press Inc., 2001. 

5 Campbell, J. and A. Jardine, Maintenance excellence: Optimizing equipment lifecycle decisions, CRC Press, 2011. 

The Author

M. H. Alsubhi - Saudi Aramco, Yanbu Industrial City, Saudi Arabia

Mohammed H. Alsubhi works as a Reliability and Asset Management Engineer in the Yanbu Refinery Department for Saudi Aramco. He is a Certified Risk Management Professional (CMRP) and is certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP). Alsubhi graduated from Newcastle University, United Kingdom, and has 8 yr of experience working at different roles within oil refineries and natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionation plants, including leading the design, execution, pre-commissioning and commissioning of various projects (piping, electrical and mechanical systems).The author can be reached at Mohammed.Alsubhi@aramco.com.

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