To shut down or not to shut down, that's the question !

4 million contractors were also affected. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the 35-day Shutdown has cost the U.S. economy a mind blowing $11 billion.

We also have shutdowns in our world of capital-intensive assets. While for one company the term 'shutdown' refers to the phase of a Turnaround in which production is stopped, for another company the term 'shutdown' is synonymous with the entire turnaround process.  In contrast to the shutdown of the American government agencies,  in the industry a shutdown or turnaround is indispensable for the continuity of the company. Many essential inspections, repairs and maintenance tasks can only be carried out when the installation is down and has been safely taken out of service. Expansion projects also require a standstill in nine out of ten cases.

And as with the American Shutdown, the economic impact of a turnaround cannot be underestimated. Benchmarks show that outages consume 2 to 5% of the theoretically available production capacity. In the chemical industry, planned outages amount to 30 to 50% of the total maintenance budget But that's not all.  Stops - due to the fact that there is no production - have a major impact on the supply chain of the products produced and therefore also on market prices.   For example, prices on the European MMA market (Methyl Methacrylate) were historically high at the beginning of 2018 due to a combination of planned and unplanned stops at several production sites. The costs for a shutdown exceeding the deadline increase considerably. This is not only due to the extra costs for the delayed work, but especially due to the extra missed production and reputation damage with possible loss of customers if delivery reliability is compromised.

It doesn't have to come this far however. A well-defined scope, a timely start of the preparation and clear agreements with the contractors will help your shutdown quite a bit on its way.  There are also plenty of smart tools to make a stop run efficiently and within the scheduled time. For example, a hands-on-tools measurement can help to reduce unnecessary waiting times. Centrally installed lighting, air and power supplies help to save costs and increase safety. Intelligent IoT sensors with track & trace functionality can help monitor the progress of repair & overhaul of time-critical components.  

The most important success factor for a successful stop, however, is the quality and completeness of the preparation.  And although an insufficiently organized stop will still succeed in executing 90% of the jobs on time (although with more difficulty), the remaining 10% will cause delays, a higher risk of safety incidents, and a budget overrun.  

Hence the vital importance of timely and adequate preparation of the stop. The investment in an extra week of preparation and planning by the shutdown organization more than compensates the cost of an extra day of downtime.  Also investing in attention to the quality of the work carried out has an attractive payback through the increased availability and capacity of the production equipment once it is put back into service.

But this is not all. Have you ever challenged the scope of work and checked whether all the jobs in the shutdown are really necessary? And have you already thought about the possibilities to increase the interval between two stops? You even might be able to skip some ‘traditional’ stops completely? ‘To shutdown or not to shutdown', it’s really worth thinking about...

Wim Van Cauwenberghe