Satyam slashes shutdown time at Rain CII Carbon plant

The expedited shutdown enabled the production of an additional 3,650 tons of calcined petroleum coke, primarily used for anode manufacture by aluminum producers.

By applying a management solution recently implemented at a Rain Commodities Ltd. cement plant in India, Rain CII Carbon brought its plant back online in 17.4 days, compared to the approximately 23.2 days it had planned.

Satyam helped Rain CII Carbon employ a solution based on the Theory of Constraints (TOC), where it implemented the solution using TOC¡¦s Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) methodology, which has been used in numerous projects to ensure on-time (or ahead-of-schedule) project completion, without changing the original project scope and budget.

The solution can be used in various industries including chemical process, petroleum refining, and steel, that have planned maintenance turnarounds and for which increasing uptime of critical equipment is paramount.

It can also be applied to reduce the duration of plant expansions and upgrades, as well as Greenfield projects.

The Rain Commodities cement plant in India (a sister company of Rain CII Carbon), reduced shutdown duration by 28 percent, which allowed for the manufacture of an additional 15,000 tons of cement.

¡§The TOC solution has helped us break new ground in how turnarounds are planned, monitored and executed, and we are rolling out this solution to all our plants in the US,¡¨ said Stephen L. Rowland, Rain CII Carbon¡¦s Chief Operating Officer.

¡§Clearly, it is a transformational approach. Additionally, this success was achieved despite the fact that the scope of work increased substantially as equipment was brought back online¡Xtypical of any plant turnaround.¡¨

Part of the methodology¡¦s success stems from breaking two longstanding project management beliefs that revolve around the amount of safety factored into task time estimations, which is not enough to protect against uncertainties that typify project environments.

Changes occurring in the way project safety is managed can also result in significant benefits without compromising employee or equipment wellbeing. Furthermore, the focus on completion of each task on time is the only way to guarantee a project will end on schedule.

Actually, a diffused focus on numerous activities is ineffective. At any given time, only one task poses the highest risk to on-time project completion; this task, according to TOC, is the only one that needs to be highlighted for recovery.

¡§By applying Satyam¡¦s proposed simple, yet revealing measures, we brought considerable management focus to areas and tasks where it was truly needed,¡¨ said Jimmy Delaneuville, Plant Manager of the Gramercy plant.

¡§The shutdown featured 166 tasks, but we were able to focus on the critical ones; we did not diffuse our focus by micromanaging all of them. Additionally, review meetings were brief and efficient, and really demonstrated the importance of focusing on the right tasks.¡¨