Assessing the cost of unreliability in gas plant to have a sustainable operation

With ever-increasing pressure worldwide, it is essential that gas and petrochemical plants operate with high reliability and safety to maximize the return obtained for the capital investment. Higher plant reliability reduces process and equipment failures costs as failure disruption decreases production output which in turn limits the benefits of business for End-Users and OEM as well. For the business, the financial issue of reliability is controlling the cost of unreliability (COUR) from equipment and process failures which waste money. This situation is typical of industries where plants have high equipment redundancy and where only the availability figure is tracked. The strong competitive environment between companies and the current world financial crisis are forcing organizations to explore ways to reduce operating costs, looking for a sustainable economy environment. The cost of unreliability index is a simple and practical reliability tool for converting failure data into cost. It helps to End-Users and OEM to put reliability into a business context to reduce operational costs instead of just cutting expenditures on equipment maintenance. The purpose of this paper is to objectively demonstrate through real examples how to assess the cost of unreliability of gas plant, helping to End-Users and OEM to make the right decision in term of reliability, availability and maintainability improvement to have a sustainable operation.