Understand the importance of the maintenance as a profit center

 

We need to understand the importance of the maintenance as a profit center where processes are managed and optimized, instead the idea of maintenance where invoices are paid.

 

Energy Mega Projects

Top 5 Energy Mega Projects

Three Gorges Dam

The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric dam located at the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, in Yiling District, China. Is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity 22,500 MW.

Reasons for project failure

65% of mega projects fail:

A study carried out on large-scale projects in the oil and gas sector, where the biggest projects are related to LNG, gas pipeline, refining and upstream, found that 65% are facing cost overruns and 73% of projects have schedule delays.

The importance of the operators in a plant

The design of an industrial plant determines its production capacity. Operators must be aware of the production capacity of the plants where they work. Operators control the process to achieve the goals set by the business, so operators play a key role in achieving the business objectives.

Plant operator

Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Closed-loop control process

A closed-loop control process has a feedback that is related to the output of the system. Take for example a flow control system, the system has as input a desired value, also known as setpoint, and this setpoint is received by a controller that acts on the process sending a control signal to a flow valve. So far we have described an open control loop where there is no feedback.

To close the loop, it is required a sensor that measures the flow that varies according to the position of the valve, in this way the flow sensor measurement represents the feedback of the system.

The system then calculates the error or difference between the flow set point (reference value) and the feedback value, also called process value, which is processed by the controller to again act on the valve which will simultaneously produce a variant of the flow. At the end the goal is that the difference or error between the reference and feedback is closest to zero.

Closed-Loop Control Process

To the workers who build the industry

The workers who build the industry, workers dedicated to the construction, commissioning and maintenance of industrial plants.

I am impressed by the pictures of workers on skyscrapers in the first decades of the XX century, where workers are seen in metal structures at great heights without any personal protective equipment (PPE), makes me think of the conditions so dangerous where the employees were exposed.

A worker constructing the Empire State Building in 1930, overlooking the Chrysler Building in the background (r), by Lewis Hine

Insecurity of Smart Things, cyber attacks and vulnerability of the IoT

Billions of smart things connected, are they really secure?

Smart things such as telephones, televisions, cars, medical equipment, smart homes, etc… have taken a leading role in today's market, the aim of these devices is to provide a better product and customer service.

Approximately 6.4 billion smart things are connected, only in the United States there are 25 devices connected to the network per 100 inhabitants. People use these devices on a daily basis without realizing that they can be victims of an information theft attack at any time.

Cyber attacks to the Internet of Things