With plant turnarounds requiring significant resources to plan and execute, there are many factors to take into consideration. The pandemic magnified some of the issues in this space and challenges still exist today, making it important to implement best practices that will enable success. In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Mike Aughenbaugh, associate target market manager for Swagelok, explains the evolution of turnarounds as a result of the pandemic and best practices that can enable improved processes.
Below is the transcript of the podcast:
PS: Maybe we can start with you telling us a little bit about yourself, and especially some projects that you're working on with Swagelok.
MA: Sure, I've actually been with Swagelok for almost 20 years now, and 18 of the last 20 years I was out in what we call our channel, which is our sales and service centers. And only in the last year and a half I've actually been at corporate based out of Solon, OH. I've been in a ton of different roles. I actually started out my career in customer service and warehousing and custom fabrication and all the other tasks, and then went into outside sales calling mostly on refineries, and oil & gas customers.
PS: And some of the projects that you're currently working on in that capacity?
MA: We do a lot of research on the marketing side of the business. We look a lot at industry trends, we talk a lot with other industry experts that are out there, we go to a lot of trade shows of course. And then we do a lot of projections on where business is going in the world, and what are the type of projects that they work on. We look specifically on a lot of upstream projects that are occurring right now, and where those are going to ultimately end up.
PS: Let's dive right into the topic of turnaround best practices. One of the things that I noted in doing some research on this topic is that COVID had a significant impact on our industry's ability to conduct regular scheduled turnarounds. Could you tell us about some of the hurdles that we've overcome since that period, and maybe some of the challenges you're seeing out there.
MA: Oh yeah, I was at the front lines of this stuff too, and a lot of COVID work was going on and a lot of turnarounds were happening. It was really a stressful time for vendors out there, because the whole world flipped upon itself and supply chain was no different. What hasn't changed is that the focus is still on large equipment, large projects, critical paths, things like that.
But really, what changed is that because a lot of people were remote, most of the projects folks were remote, too, so it was really difficult to collaborate with them on some of the things that they were working on. Vendor access was restricted, so we didn't get to communicate with a lot of people on-site anymore. Some of the real, more detailed things that we dealt with is that a lot of exotic alloys, especially around those supply chains, were very difficult. Even on some standard carbon steel, we were having some issues with that.
Things were very difficult to obtain in a timely manner. There were a lot of material surprises, so last-minute shipping changes would occur. Labor was very scarce, and even with labor being scarce, people were socially distancing, so project teams could have to be separated, and there weren't as many of them out there.
Post-COVID, I think we learned a lot of things, and that's really what's driving a lot of the change that you see now. More detailed procurement strategies are one of them, where they're not just concerned about the big equipment coming in and the high dollar items, they're worried about a lot of the ancillary products that go along with those larger product implementations and those critical paths.
The on-site accumulation of materials happens earlier too. In the past they would have an area for the big equipment to go to and then they would reach out to the vendor when they needed their things a couple of weeks in advance. Now they're staging things earlier, so you may find a pallet of equipment or materials or widget that are sitting there 6-7 months in advance of when they actually need them, and that's been a big change.
Also, full product project usages are now essential instead of spot purchases, so they're looking at the totality of those items that they need as opposed to splitting that up into smaller purchase orders. All in all, the trend is for more detailed looks at everything that they're doing and that's a big change for our customers.
Some of the challenges that still remain is that labor is going to continue to be an issue. Some of the trends we see revolve around third parties to fulfill historical on-site labor. That's not going to change and this is placing pressures on vendors and third parties to do more on-site services, calling up those specialized vendors to perform things that they may have done in the past with on-site labor. Some of these can be things like material takeoffs, asking the vendor to come in and actually do a count of what they need for them, or going out and finding defects where you're going after defect elimination, identification of those assets. Inventory management would be one of the final things that you would commonly see change now because of post-COVID.
PS: Mike, I've seen a presentation that you delivered on this topic before, outlining 7 tips for effective plant turnarounds. Given the successes you describe, where people are changing with the times, but also that there are some opportunities still out there, what are some of those best practices that you would say plant teams should target when they're going to plan and conduct their turnarounds this year?
MA: Number one has to be engage early with your suppliers. When we first started talking about effective plant turnarounds, I was always trying to get end users to engage early with vendors, and really I think COVID really put that into hyperdrive. A lot of the supply chain issues, particularly on things that are not bread and butter items for a lot of those suppliers, there's definitely there's always going to be supply chain issues now, so that really affected things. Exotic alloys, for example, is a perfect one, right? A lot of things going on in project improvements are going to be things like metallurgical upgrades to their systems, and a lot of those metallurgies can cause issues if you are expecting them to have the same type of deliveries as standard stainless steel or carbon steel, for example.
So really, just engage with their vendors very, very early on, and what I mean by very early on is when you're in the actual planning stages of that project, that's when you should be reaching out to your vendors and asking for assistance, not for when the project has already been designed and now you need to start talking about individual part numbers.
Another one, this is going to be huge and is going to be elevated by labor shortages, is go after prefabricated assemblies. A lot of times facilities will want to update things, such as grab sampling systems or seal flush assemblies or gas distribution. These are all customized things that generally you would hand over to an engineering house to put together a design of it, and then they would hand it off to a contractor or someone else to fix. Engaging those vendors early, making that its own part number, is just going to eliminate or reduce the amount of hours that you need to install that component. Now instead of spending all your time on the details of individual fittings, for example, now you can just order that one panel and install it and it will really speed up and lessen your cost.
The final thing is going to be on quality control, and I don't mean quality control in terms of vendor pieces and parts. I'm thinking more about the quality of labor that you have on site. One of the trends we see with refining and chemical plants, for example, is that a lot more of their labor is coming from outside of the facility. With that, you're going to have a lot of variation in the quality of the systems that eventually you as an owner operator are going to be taking over – those systems are going to become yours once that project is over.
