RELIABILITY vs ASSET MANAGEMENT vs SAFETY vs COMPANY GOALS vs HUMAN BEING The title is doubtful. Isn't it?

It's like a mixed salad. The discussions going on, on a global scale is not more clear than the title. At the wake of publishing of ISO 55000, we, reliability professionals, are far from having clarified our minds about the strategy to get rid of problems, and have a flawless profit producing operation. Is it possible to get rid of all problems? I guess not because nature, including human being, is not yet predictable. We can, 'minimize' problems, accidents, incidents but can not get rid of them. Assuming this is a generally accepted viewpoint, we can proceed with a perspective which I hope will contribute in clarifying concepts. I will try to paint a realistic landscape where we can see the relationships of relevant facts and managing categories. I expect to be inspired by this painting. * The industrial operational facility, is all that is the case. An industrial operational facility as a physical entity is an artificial nature with its' own food chain, an integral system independent of money; provided that the latter is available. The food chain starts with the raw material, each component of the system is an energy consumer, has its peculiar functional subsystems with an end result of product. This product in turn becomes money to buy raw material, and to further build new artificial natures. We wish this 'ecosystem' to operate without problems continuously. On the other hand this artificial nature is not self regulatory, opposite to mother nature. That's why we monitor and intervene. Artificial nature was created by knowledge and work. It should be controlled by knowledge and work. So far there is nothing special. What is special is introduced by the abundance and variety of the necessary knowledge, and work against time effect, not mentioning change of people, targets, and functions. Maintenance is introduced. Maintenance is an intervention activity which does not exist in the mother nature. Management is needed because we have finite resources, we have to be in harmony with the regulations, have a target called profit. These are strict limits. Given this coarse description of the general conditions of an industrial operational system, we can now ask how to build or maintain a system with the least but best intervention effort? What principles should prevail to simplify this process? How can we have a near problem free system? * In order to economically clarify my word, I will neglect ideas irrelevant to the 'core' discussion. The discussion mainly involves three arguments: Working environment, work and reliability.

INTRODUCTION: What is a working environment? Can we say that a working environment is that 'thing' we feel after work? We talk about our work. We think about our work, our job, our profession, management, relationships. Our most efficient portion of life is spent at work. We may talk about success, enemies, injustice, incidents, incompetencies, competencies, bad or good meals, wages etc. We make jokes, gossip. What kind of talk is usual? What is usual, establish a character which I call character of the working environment. My main concentration here will be the working environment as a basic tool for the economic management of a reliable economic operation. Let's analyze work and environment separately to attain some control handles. WORK: Scientifically, work is energy multiplied by travel distance. We can comfortably define that all work consist of a human being's effort to change a thing's state of being in accordance with a target; be it an office work, maintenance work, operational work, even a pump work with the exception of the activity called 'management'. I do not consider management as work, unless it is performed with respect to standards, definitions, and with reliable behavior in accordance with general governance morals agreed upon, perhaps declared as in ISO 9001. With the definition above, we can see some basic components of work, which have the potential of changing the result of work: Targets (as conceived), competency, method, willingness, conditions, and tools. Some of these six components can be controlled; competency, method, conditions, and tools, not necessarily easily. The other two; targets (as conceived), and willingness have super-dynamic character. They can not be controlled, but they can be supported, maintained. The controllable traits can influence improvement to a certain stage, but if targets are not conceived objectively, and there is a problem with willingness a cancer might start growing: miscommunication. Although most machines are not self regulatory, human beings are. They improve and they like improvement if they are supported; if the management system is just, transparent, and positive. That is the only possibility of improving the last two components of work. ENVIRONMENT: Environment here, puts the subject matter of work at the center. Since no complete work exists without human being, we can easily replace the word 'work' by 'working human being'. Now we can describe that the working environment is the sum total of physical, natural, material, psychological, managerial facts which enables the working human beings existence; hence predefines it. As many engineers know, 'multivariable control' is referred to as 'advanced control'. In our case the control problem seeks no less advanced solution. The good thing about this super multivariable problem is that all the variables themselves have dedicated master controllers. Provided that the working environment as a super master controller is established openly and rationally, showing flexible target set points the autonomous master

controllers i.e. working human beings can fine tune, even change the control behavior, the control action to converge to the set point. This is a fact which would be a dream for a control specialist. ...But why should he or she do it? Working people are valuable like all people, and need to be trusted. The working environment should be maintained and supervised continuously in such a way to enable working people do their work with their best performance. This needs transparent, positive, just, human centered management. The transparency should not exclude class conflict. (Sometimes companies use 'family' metaphor to support positive relationships.I believe that this tactic creates double standard, hence unreliability.) This point invites the reliability concept. RELIABILITY: Reliability is the talent of performing the expected. It is so simple to say, so hard to do unless reliability is considered a common virtue in the working environment. What do we mean by a reliable person? Before jumping into the jungle of operational reliability, let's keep definitions simple and clear. A reliable person's thoughts are consistent with his/her practice integrated in a robust moral. (By morals here general philosophy of life is meant.) What makes a person reliable is his 'credible predictability' An example from football is suitable. A team consists of playing and nonplaying members; a captain, a trainer, supporting workers, managers and a boss. No one member is the same as another. They have different traits as to physical condition, structure, speed, intelligence, talent or morals. Super players do not make a good team. What makes a good team is a seamless integration intertwined by tolerant, creative, comfortable relationships, an objective owned by all, willingness enabled by the value of what they do. Willingness or motivation, is dependent on the individual but can not be created by the individual him/herself only. The target is not sufficient. Money is not sufficient. The person needs to be valued, autonomous within certain limits, communicative; a working environment that he/she feels a self realization. Sometimes players quarrel because somehow some of them become a barrier to others' self realization. For self realization team members should know each other, respect and appreciate each other, and allow the necessary free area of self realization. This is done very easily, with many different ways if reliability culture is dominant. If a player is not so good at defending a specific forward player, his friend will help him, being sure about his friend's doing his best but this is not enough. Is this rational or optimum? No. Is this good? Yes. Is this necessary? Yes, again.

Reliability is not always rational in the mechanical sense. We all have weaknesses and powerful sides. Complementing each other makes us a team. This requires transparency, communication, clarity, and a reliable environment; which can only be enabled by a reliable management system. Therefore I am proposing the term 'Reliability for Operation' instead of 'Operational Reliability'. When this is the case discussions like 'Operational reliability vs Safety which comes first?' will be void. The conceptual pyramid can reside on its base instead of its' peak. Reliability for operation is an enabler for safety, like all the work, and this is a concept in the realm of human relationship which also enables a simulation of reliability; 'Operational Reliability'. CONCLUSION: A work environment suggests the overall performance. Provided that all the necessary work is analyzed and tailored suitably to the needs of industrial operational system, working people; craftsmen, engineers, designers, secretaries, pipe fitters, electricians, mechanics...will perform as intrinsically coordinated master controllers in a reliable working environment, but superseding it by the virtue of giving intelligent feedback to optimize the design and operation of the management system. Therefore safety is not a competitor of reliability, on the opposite safety and reliability are close friends. Safety is enabled by reliable working environment. A choice of operational continuity against safety is merely proof of an unreliable system. On the other hand an asset management system is a subset of a reliability management system, which should be simplified by taking away the processes like RCA. Any system or scheme will get live by people, and reality will differ from theory. Therefore try to find the natural balance without creating stars from top, but allowing collectively created leaders. Manage reliability via justice, transparency, structural, formal and informal communication, processes, results and tolerance. Let democratic management be a reality. Share the profit. Create a manageable but lively work environment. Delegate and monitor. Monitor and evaluate. Evaluate and discuss. Discuss and make compromises. Nothing is perfect. Give and take. Enable people. mer Haluk Ylmaz (Ex) Reliability Champion Izmir Refinery Turkey