Avoiding Unplanned Machinery Stoppage is a very old commitment for any maintenance organization. There have been many tools developed for achieving this goal. However, Zero Unplanned Machinery Stoppages is not a simple goal. Avoiding surprises, in other words, is an exciting and hard to achieve objective.

Back in Dec-2002, Venezuelan national oil company and its affiliates were into strike for political reasons. At that time, Pequiven (Moron Complex) was in its third consecutive year with no earnings. The company was about to be sold. This is the only

facility producing Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potassium based fertilizers, both simple (Urea, DAP, imported KCL) and complex (NPK in several compositions).

An strategy to improve the performance of the complex was necessary: Improve the process reliability was a must. The main objective for this paper is to share the success of this effort, using PAS-55 (standard used today to implement Asset Management) as a guide.

The job performed started with the selection of the appropriated methodologies and, therefore, the major “partners” in this effort. The starting methodologies selected are PROACT for the Root Cause Analysis (RCA – tool selected for investigating undesired

events) and RCM+ for the Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM – tool selected to establish new maintenance strategies). This means that the technology partners were also selected: Reliability Inc. for RCA and The Woodhouse Partnership Ltd. (TWPL) for RCM.

The risk calculation is also a dilemma very frequently. To go over this problem, it was decided to “calculate” the risk as money. This way, it is very simple to compare “risks” between plants and different installations, providing a very useful tool to select where it was better to start.