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  • LEAD TO SUCCEED

    85% of what you earn as a living is not related to your technical skills but it is related to your soft skills! It's one thing to have great technical skillsets but people often underestimate the value of soft skills. Ashley Martin and Roger Tetrault partner to provide "Soft Skills" training at Brazosport College in Lake Jackson, TX. It was an awesome night of learning and collaboration and it was also the Instrument, Electrical and Analyzer Network of Brazoria County's first network training session. The session titled, "Lead to Succeed" was enabled by the F.O.C.U.S. Factor elements: ​First You: Self Stewardship, Outlining Priorities, Communication and Collaboration, Undoing Procrastination, and Solving Problems & Setting Boundaries.

  • MEN OF IMPACT WITH DR. BRAD

    Successful Engineer and Founder of 'Re.enginner' Discussing A New Innovative Way For Professionals to Collaborate! On 6/16/2020 Shadrach Stephens was guest speaker on the MEN OF IMPACT FB live series with Dr. Brad...the livestream show where high-achieving men come to discover their purpose, pursue their calling, and IMPACT the world! ******* This week's guest is Shadrach Stephens, Award-winning Engineer and Founder of Re.enginner initiative, which is a community of professionals that collaborate, share and leverage value added solutions and innovations. He'll be sharing his genius, his journey in pursuit of this new passion, and how he's impacting the world around him! ******* Interview: https://www.facebook.com/brad.wv.7/videos/1451528751717170/

  • RE.ENGINEER IN ACTION MENTORSHIP PROGRAM

    OUR VISION We aspire to create a bridge between advanced and junior level professionals, one that enables them to leverage solutions, techniques, innovation, technology and overall leadership perspectives. We remain committed to the professional development of the communities we serve. This being said, we are looking for professionals to volunteer their time to mentor other professionals. We want to make sure that the next generation of experts are prepare to solve the next generation of challenges, and what better way to do that then leave a legacy behind. THE PROCESS Simple. Complete the template below and send to info@reengineer.co. We will develop a database of mentors and mentees so that connections and partnerships can be established. The focus of our program is to cover general industry discussion and not necessarily specific to any one company. Our intent is to gain an outside perspective but not to share intellectual property. If you just want to learn more about the Re.engineer in Action Mentoring Program then please send us a request here: www.reengineer.co/contact.

  • BUILDING A WINNING RESUME

    DID YOU KNOW? 40% of hiring managers spend less than 60 seconds reviewing each resume they receive, and if you think that's bad, 25% spend less than 30 seconds. 75% of human resources managers have caught a lie on a resume. An unprofessional email address is a major problem for 35% of employers. 77% of hiring managers immediately disqualify resumes because of grammatical mistakes or typos. A resume that's longer than two pages is a deal-breaker for 17% of hiring managers. Job seekers, do we have your attention? Our Re.engineer community never fails when it comes to providing professional development solutions and we've recently partnered with Natalie Raby, Senior Talent Acquisition expert on the importance of developing a winning resume. Natalie provides us with some perspectives on what employers and recruiters are looking for in a resume. An employer's number one goal is to find a well-qualified candidate. How can you show that you are qualified, and the best possible person for the job? Employers are looking to see if you can put together a presentable document. This is true for all jobs, but particularly positions where communications and presentation matter. - Natalie Raby Connect with Natalie on LinkedIn. DOWNLOAD THIS HACK! Keep scrolling for more content and Natalie's video on resume building. Want more details? Check out Resume Building with Natalie Raby!

  • RELIABILITY IMPROVES BY 85%

    CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER Shadrach Stephens CHALLENGE A business sector within a manufacturing facility was experiencing annual production losses in the millions of dollars due to instrumentation related equipment failures. This facility was averaging 50 unplanned shutdowns per year due to instrument equipment technologies. SOLUTION A team of subject matter experts analyzed historical downtime and implemented an Informal Root Cause Investigation process in where each unplanned event was broken down by using three simple steps, 1) Root Cause Identified, 2) Short-term Solution Implemented, 3) Long-term Strategy Implemented. This approach was combined with a comprehensive reliability program that focused on Reactive, Proactive, Reliability Centered Culture Initiatives and Instrument Engineering Projects (see video below for details). RESULT After the implementation of the new program, the business sector realized an 85% reduction in instrument equipment failures. IMPACT Millions of dollars in production and reduction of maintenance cost.

  • BETTER LUBE MANAGEMENT BOOSTS ASSET AVAILABILITY

    CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER Noria Corporation (www.noria.com) CHALLENGE The Gerber production plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas, manufactures a wide range of high-quality baby food products. Along with aseptic cups, glass jarred products and meat sticks, the facility produces enough infant cereal to supply North America. In 2006, the plant began a journey to positively impact their predictive maintenance program. One of their initial findings was that nearly every oil sample contained silica, so they started with performing informal root cause failure analysis to examine how the facility’s lubricants were being managed. Specific Opportunities: Short gearbox lifespans Contaminated oil Poor lubricant storage and handling SOLUTION The first step in improving Gerber’s lubrication management was to reduce the amount of silica showing up in the oil samples. Nearly everything lubrication related had to be corrected, from how and where lubricants were stored, to how much and how often they were applied. Rather than “re-inventing the wheel,” they researched lubrication management and found universal truths across all industries. Oil must be kept clean, dry and controlled from the time of purchase through gearbox top-offs. Subsequently, and by staying true to these truths, Gerber implemented lubrication management with another universal principle as the guide: apply the right lubricant in the proper amount at the correct time. Noria’s Lubrication Program Development (LPD): Maintaining proper oil levels Extracting representative oil samples form critical gearboxes Adding oil sample extraction ports, catch pipes and breathers Noria onsite training, online courses and videos Noria certification study aids RESULT With a new approach to lubrication management, the facility's average consumption of its two primary food-grade lubricants dropped from 650 gallons to just 110 gallons annually – a reduction of more than 80%, which resulted in more than $15,000 a year in savings. This made a sustainable reduction to the plant’s operations budget. 80% reduction in lubricant consumption Improved oil cleanliness Best practices for lubrication management Increased gearbox life cycles Reduced downtime Skilled workers ​ IMPACT ​Annual savings of $15,000

  • THERMAL OXIDIZER - CFD ANALYSIS

    CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER ​KnightHawk Engineering ​www.knighthawk.com CHALLENGE Background: ​​Thermal Oxidizers are widely applied in industry for air pollution control, specifically for the destruction of waste gases and liquids containing hazardous pollutants. These pollutants are thermally destroyed to a high efficiency, oxidized mainly to CO2 and H2O before release to atmosphere under strict environmental control permit conditions. KnightHawk has extensive experience in the troubleshooting, failure analysis and optimization of thermal oxidizers. The challenge: ​A Thermal Oxidizer experienced problems under certain operating conditions, waste gas & liquid flows and compositions. The operators observed high vibrations and flame instabilities. Liquid injections were not adequately entrained and destroyed resulting in dropout, rundown and corrosion of walls and piping. Particulate matter and VOC emissions exceeded permit limits. SOLUTION KnightHawk engineering developed CFD models including for the reaction kinetics to (i) establish the Root Cause, (ii) Trouble Shooting and (iii) Solution Development. The models were calibrated and verified against process data measurements such as temperatures and emissions, proving a very good correlation. Physical models applied included for an air-methane burner, swirling and turbulence model, radiation, mixture compositions, discrete phase droplet injections and species transport by reactions. By visualing temperatures, velocities, species fractions and streamlines over section planes and quantifying in linearized XY plots, the problems were evident. Flame impingement by waste products; Poor mixing of waste streams with hot flue gases; low residence times and injections of atomized droplets in low heat/low velocity regions were identified. RESULT ​Solutions were developed to ensure a shielded flame front, effective mixing of waste products with hot flue gases and long enough residence times to ensure boiling and vaporization of droplets and complete thermal destruction of volatiles and organics.

  • BEST PRACTICES FOR LUBRICATION

    CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER Noria Corporation (www.noria.com) (Read Case Study) CHALLENGE Oklahoma Gas and Electric (OG&E) operates seven power plants throughout Oklahoma and for plants like Muskogee, the know-how and expertise with lubrication was lacking. While lubrication was not a strong focus at the Muskogee plant, it became a core strength with the integration of Noria's Lubrication Program Development. Specific Opportunities: Lack of lubrication standards Failure to implement proper lubrication procedures Lack of specialized lubrication maintenance training SOLUTION Noria implemented their Lubrication Program Development system and helped OG&E transform the plant's lubrication procedures on all critical assets. Below are a few of the solutions that they executed: Noria's engineering design for machine optimum reference state (ORS) Lubricant storage room design and consolidation Noria's on-site private training with upper management and front-line (technicians) operators Customized, hands-on new equipment implementation training Coaching from Noria experts on goal-setting, KPIs, tracking, monitoring and other analytics Company culture change at plant RESULT Achieved ROI sooner than expected and with best practices for lubrication in place, fewer unplanned outages are occurring at Muskogee. Noria has also helped OG&E be smarter about purchasing oil for lubrication. Previously, Muskogee used 23 different types of oil. That number was reduced to 16 after transitioning to best practices. As a result, OG&E has negotiating power with oil providers because fewer oil types are needed at the plant, and they know exact specifications to request. Here are more of their results: Major cultural shit to better performing people and machines Less downtime More efficient production Properly trained maintenance staff Decrease in operational and repair cost ​Significant increase in plant efficiency and profitability IMPACT In one example, technicians were able to analyze and stop a piece of equipment from breaking down that would have cost them $350,000. This one instance more than covered the program cost.

  • ECONOMIZER TUBE FAILURE ANALYSIS

    CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER ​KnightHawk Engineering (KHE) ​www.knighthawk.com CHALLENGE ​A petrochemical plant has experienced several failures in the past few years in the tubes of a recycle gas cracking furnace. A root cause failure analysis shows the failures are likely caused by vaporization in the coils causing thermal fatigue cracking. KHE was asked to determine possible solutions to prevent future failures. SOLUTION KHE created a heat and mass transfer model of the furnace. This model was used to predict outlet temperatures from the lower boiler feed water coil (LBFW) and showed that there was vaporization in the coils. KHE proposed the replacement of the bottom two rows of the LBFW with bare tubes instead of the preexisting finned tubes. Simulations showed the bare tubes increasing the overall efficiency of the furnace and preventing vaporization even under the worst case operating conditions.​ RESULT The client replaced the two bottom rows with bare tubes as recommended. As a result the unit has not experienced tube failures in almost 3 years of operation.

  • IMPROVING UPTIME AT ALLIANDER

    CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER Ralph Rio, ARC Advisory Group (Read Case Study) CHALLENGE Alliander provides energy transport and distribution for electricity, gas, and heat to a large part of the Netherlands. ARC had the opportunity to interview Walther Rasche, IT Manager, Operations and Jaak Rosendaal, SAP Solution Architect. Both are involved in applying the SAP Master Data Governance EAM extension by Utopia at Alliander N.V. Regulatory and competitive pressures led Alliander to start a condition-based maintenance program to improve asset reliability and the sustainability of the company. Most of the electric power Alliander distributes is still produced by power stations, but this is changing. Grid complexity has been increasing due to: Consumers and businesses generating energy via solar or wind and feeding the power back into Alliander’s grid. In 2018, the installed solar capacity in Alliander's service areas expanded by 76 percent. Of the three million customers, over 107,000 (3.6 percent) feed power back into the grid. With more electric vehicles, the number of charging stations rose from 3,570 to 4,350 (up 20 percent) in 2018. New data centers consume huge amounts of power. These changes significantly increase grid complexity and sources of failure. In the Netherlands, customers - both consumers and companies - obtain compensation when downtime exceeds four hours. Several years ago, Alliander had an incident with its gas distribution system that affected 1,300 consumers. The payments averaged 750 euros each for a total of about a million euros – which is high enough to get everyone’s attention. SOLUTION Alliander has deployed the SAP Master Data Governance, enterprise asset management extension by Utopia software. This provided a solid foundation of asset information for a broad condition-based maintenance (CBM) program. Alliander is now on a path to reduce unplanned downtime and improve uptime with lower maintenance costs. To serve as an effective planning and management tool for high uptime and safety, information in an EAM (enterprise asset management) system requires high data integrity. Key benefits of asset life-cycle information management (ALIM) include: Reduced unplanned downtime with accurate data for maintenance scheduling and execution, including predictive maintenance (PdM). Improved efficiency with a standard data model across asset management, i.e., maintenance, reliability, and asset integrity inspections. Reduced costs through efficient labor and parts management. RESULT Alliander’s CBM program recently finished its pilot acceptance of the Extension and achieved one of its primary goals for high quality data. The asset management system updates occur automatically using templates. This automated business process replaced manual data entry with its inherently unacceptably high error rate. Data integrity is critical for a successful CBM program – particularly one with dynamic data models. Utilization of the Extension provided the needed governance, including traceability of changes to the data by who and when. This includes unstructured data like a comment about a tree being near a line and the location. The Extension reduced the time needed to register an asset in the SAP system from hours to a few minutes. It also enabled integration of the SAP EAM asset management system with NRG for critical GIS asset location data. According to Alliander, the Extension can deliver the software foundation needed to implement business processes that solve the company’s asset data quality and inconsistency issues.

  • SLAG GRINDER DESIGN

    CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER KnightHawk Engineering ​www.knighthawk.com CHALLENGE Crushers and Slag grinders are often applied in Materials Handling and Gasification plants to reduce the size of quenched slag from the gasifier’s tap-hole or break clinkers from slow moving bed reactors. These clinkers are typically brittle and relatively easy to crush, but may be larger and very hard and abrasive when sintered during a reactor transient or upset conditions. Also, these crushers are often of toothed roller type, integrated in a pressure vessel subject to charge / discharge cycles, slow rotating yet transmitting very high torques and crushing forces. This makes it simultaneously a ‘machine’ and a ‘pressure vessel’. A slag breaker dating from the 1970’s required replacement. The new design had to incorporate lessons learned in operations and maintenance, fit accurately into the existing structure and inlet-outlet flange face-to-face envelope, and re-use the existing drivetrain. The crusher must reduce slag as well as occasional refractory tiles or bricks, dislodged from the gasifier hot face, to no more than 1” in size to avoid bridging and arching in the outlet. The equipment must be designed, manufactured, tested and delivered to site under schedule constraints, in time for the next scheduled shutdown. SOLUTION KnightHawk engineering digitized hand drawn blue-prints and developed 3D CAD models (below) applied in concept development, client reviews and manufacturer reviews and design. Detailed 2D CAD drawings and part lists as well as geometry and meshing for Finite Element (FEA) designs, were developed from this model. The pressure vessel was designed as per ASME VIII Division 1 with supplementory analysis by FEA as per ASME/API 579-1 Fitness for Service (FFS) by using the methods and guidelines from ASME VIII Division 2 Part 5. The rotating parts and breaker element were integrated into the pressure vessel by shaft, breaker tooth, breaker plates, gland seals, end bearings and a bolt-on cantilever drive unit (not shown) consisting of a motor, gearbox and coupling. The breaker element is protected from overpower, including an auto reverse, circuit breaker, shear pin and hydraulic coupling.​ RESULT Successful design was achieved by: A multi-party, collaborative design process including original OEM Designer, Owner-Operator, KHE Specialty Engineering and Manufacturers all with significant experience in industry. A multi-disciplinary approach including process, mechanical, metallurgical and controls. A multi-physics approach including code ‘design by rules’, FEA ‘design by analysis’, 1st principle machine and structural design by correlations as well as fatigue, thermal and modal analysis…ensuring a design fit for purposes and with adequate protection against failure.

  • OPTIMIZING CONDENSATE PUMPS

    CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER Keith Lapeyrouse Process Reliability Solutions, www.prs-llc.com CHALLENGE ​It’s amazing how pesky condensate pumps can be. But think about it. They are the least important part of a project typically bought at the lowest cost by the least experienced member of the team. Forty years ago, I was working at a chemical plant and it had 3 low pressure (L.P.) condensate return systems that was costing the plant $22K per year in maintenance. SOLUTION Let me describe the three different systems: The 1st L.P. Condensate Return System was 20 years old. It had a ground mounted supply tank with dual condensate pumps (perhaps they expected unreliability). Each of the condensate pumps were center mounted (meaning two seals per pump). It failed often and cost $22K per year in Maintenance. The second was 10 years old. The reservoir was about 4' above the tank. It had a single condensate pump center mounted (meaning two seals). The extra NPSHa from the elevated reservoir really helped. It only failed twice per year and cost 7K per year in Maintenance. The last (3rd System) L.P Condensate Return System was 3 years old. It was by the same manufacturer as the second, so the reservoir was about 4' above the tank. It had a single condensate pump which was overhung (one seal). It had a spare pump in the warehouse. It had good performance! RESULT One day, when the 2nd system pump failed, I used the spare from the 3rd system and it became my second system. It ran great! I started staving the $7k/yr. After it ran well for a while, I convinced the plant to upgrade the 1st system. The new system installed was the cost of maintenance for a year. So what's the point of the story? The cash was my salary at the time. The NPV is about $250K at this point. Fixing the small things pays big dividends! IMPACT $250K

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