Improving the robustness and resilience properties of maintenance

Highlights

• Distinction between the concepts of robustness and resilience.

• Significance of the organizational accident perspectives to the accident prevention role of maintenance.

• How maintenance can contribute to the prevention of drift.

• Robustness and resilience properties obtainable through maintenance.

• How the robustness and resilience properties of maintenance can be improved.

Abstract

Industries with major accident potential, e.g. the process industries, are usually characterized by high degree of technological and organizational complexity, and hence are fortified with layers of protection (barriers). The energy-barrier risk control model is dominant and tends to be applied by such industries over time, sometimes without paying attention to the vulnerability of the complex organizational setting encompassing production, maintenance, support and the environment. In the same vein, process industries may prioritize production at the expense of safety systems and the organizational network. Maintenance is known to be a key means of keeping safety systems functional, yet, in this paper we wish to explore how its values can be further uncovered to improve the robustness and resilience of the socio-technical system as a whole.

This paper intends to investigate what robustness and resilience properties exist in maintenance and how these can be improved in relation to maintenance interaction with other areas such as production and support and in turn improve the robustness and resilience of the process industries organization. The objective is to improve the robustness and resilience of the organization as a whole. This is realized on the basis of the perspectives of organizational accidents: energy-barrier model, normal accident theory (NAT), high reliability organizations (HRO) theory, man-made disaster (MMD) theory, conflicting objectives, adaptation and drift (COAD) theory and resilience engineering. Based on this, recommendations for improving the maintenance robustness and resilience were proposed.

Introduction

The purpose of maintenance is to retain systems in or to restore them to a functioning state. Maintenance also contributes to improved system knowledge and inter-discipline coordination that may benefit the entire organization. This may indicate that maintenance may be a contributor to robust and resilient organizations and systems whose ability to prevent or limit unexpected events is improved. It is therefore of interest to investigate how maintenance can be performed to gain this “added” value of increased organizational robustness and resilience.

Industries with major accident potential, e.g. the hydrocarbon and chemical process industries, are usually characterized by high degree of technological and organizational complexity (Okoh and Haugen, 2013a, Okoh and Haugen, 2013b). It is common practice in such industries to install layers of independent safety barriers that are capable of preventing the occurrence or mitigating the consequences of unexpected events in accordance with the energy-barrier principle (Gibson, 1961).

The energy-barrier principle is dominant among the organizational accident perspectives (Rosness et al., 2010, Okoh and Haugen, 2012) and tends to be applied by high-risk industries over time. Focus is often on technical issues, sometimes without paying attention to the vulnerability of the complex organizational setting encompassing production, maintenance, support and the environment. In the same vein, process industries may prioritize production at the expense of safety systems and the organizational network. This was the case in the Texas City refinery explosion (CSB, 2007, Okoh and Haugen, 2014c) and the Macondo blowout (SINTEF, 2011). The safety and production objectives of industries cannot be realized to the fullest without the personnel relating appropriately and adequately with each other, the environment and the systems. The application of a suitable combination (a mix of both the technologically and organizationally biased) of the accident perspectives can improve safety significantly (Pitblado, 2011, Rosness et al., 2010, Okoh and Haugen, 2012).

Several authors have highlighted the importance of maintenance to physical asset management and suggested ways to improve maintenance in relation to improved dependability of the assets (Okoh, 2010, Øien et al., 2010, Wilson, 2002). However, the potential of maintenance to improve the robustness and resilience of the organization itself has yet to be uncovered. The hypothesis is, by virtue of its interaction with the other departments and the environment, maintenance could also improve the robustness and resilience of the organization, not only systems.

Some studies have been done on robustness (Anderies et al., 2004, Nielsen and Holmefjord, 2004, Boissieres and Marsden, 2005, Pavard et al., 2006). Few of them have analyzed organizational robustness in relation to organizational accident (Nielsen and Holmefjord, 2004) or maintenance (Boissieres and Marsden, 2005). The latter focused on the telecommunications industry, whereas the former focused on a hydrocarbon industry's emergency preparedness organization – a subset of the entire industrial organization. However, this paper will explore the process industry organization from a broader perspective. Various industrial sectors are characterized by different configurations of independent and coordinated units aimed at realizing the set of organizational goals. It is important to address this situation specifically to achieve a better solution for a given industry.

In this paper, we intend to investigate what robustness and resilience properties exist in maintenance and how these can be improved in relation to maintenance interaction with other areas such as production and support and in turn improve the robustness and resilience of the process industries organization. The methodology is based on the application of the six perspectives of organizational accidents, i.e. energy-barrier model, normal accident theory (NAT), high reliability organizations (HRO), man-made disaster (MMD) theory, conflicting objectives, adaptation and drift (COAD) theory and resilience engineering (Rosness et al., 2010). Several of the perspectives focus on how accidents are not caused only by technical failures of physical systems, but in some cases by human and organizational factors or a combination of these. Hence, it is pertinent to investigate the maintenance-related contribution to organizational robustness and resilience in light of these factors. The contribution of maintenance to the organizational robustness and resilience will be derived by mapping the factors that influence robustness and resilience (according to each of the organizational accident perspectives) to the links between maintenance and production, maintenance and support, and maintenance and the environment. The paper will focus on the hydrocarbon and chemical process industries.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 will define robustness and resilience and present various views about organizational robustness and resilience from different authors, Section 3 will analyze the structure of the industry and the associated dependencies, Section 4 will describe a maintenance work process applicable to the hydrocarbon and chemical process industries, Section 5 will ascertain whether and what robustness and resilience properties are obtainable from maintenance, Section 6 will investigate how the robustness and resilience of maintenance and the organization can be improved in relation to maintenance interaction with production, support and the environment, and Section 7 will present a summary of the findings.