ARC Benchmarking Consortium Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

The members of the ARC Benchmarking Consortium have a wealth of experience, interests, and assignments from their respective companies.  These individuals and companies form the Main Working Group.  Since the consortium members have a diversity of interests, not all metrics are of interest to all participants. For example, some of them are more interested in safety-related metrics, while others are more interested in alarm management metrics and so on.

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are formed to develop metrics for specific areas of interest within the consortium structure. These groups may be formed at anytime as the need arises for a concentrated effort in defining, modifying, or just discussing the practices around a particular topic.

How Are SIGs Formed?
SIGs are typically formed based on a need expressed by a member or members within the Benchmarking Consortium membership.  The guidelines in forming a SIG are simple; there must first be a need, and the need has to extend beyond a single individual or company.  Next, there has to be an objective or goal for the activity.  In most cases, the goal is to create, modify, or better define a metric that can be shared across multiple companies.  Finally, the objective needs to have value.  This value can be simply to allow deeper understanding among members about an issue or practice, or it can be the value created by being able to measure one’s own practices against others.

What Is the Typical Duration of a SIG?
One should think of a SIG as a task or project oriented group of like-minded individuals.  So the simple answer is the SIG will last until the task is completed.  Typically this can range from a few months to indefinitely, when the issues to be addressed continue to spawn related topics for discussion and resolution.

How Much of a Time Commitment Does a SIG Member Have to Make?
These SIGs are on a volunteer basis, and are driven by participant's motivation to address a topic or issue.  Some members simply attend meetings and contribute via comments during the meeting.  Others provide suggestions before and after meetings.  The bulk of the translation of the discussion into definitions or metrics is typically done by ARC analysts.  The SIG members are generally asked to review and comment.

How Often Do SIGs Meet and What Is the Travel Requirements for a SIG Member?
Most SIGs are able to leverage Internet technology; meetings are most often held as virtual meetings via a web meeting once a quarter for about an hour and a half.  Meetings can be held more or less frequently, depending on the task at hand.  In addition, since the Benchmarking Consortium has an extranet devoted to the Consortium’s activities, all minutes, discussions, and resulting documentation can be found there.  Members can also take advantage of ARC Forums to meet and continue discussions on a face-to-face basis.

How Do SIG-generated Metrics Get Approved?
New metrics are first reviewed and refined with the cooperation of the SIG members.  Once the SIG members are satisfied that the metric is clear, the definitions are crisp and understandable by others, and there is a clear value proposition for others to participate in the use of the metric, the Benchmarking Consortium Main Working Group is asked to review and provide comments.  This is usually done in two steps; first by circulating the new metric to the main working group for comments, then the metric is discussed as part of a Main Working Group web meeting.  The approved metrics are then added to the official metric set and made available to all members of the Benchmarking Consortium, regardless of whether they participated in the SIG or not.

Energy Management Benchmarking Special Interest Group (SIG)

Energy Conservation and Cost
Many members of the Benchmarking Consortium have energy management as a common issue.  Conservation, cost containment, and emissions reduction are motivators for these members.  Big savings can be made for the manufacturing plants that consume large amounts of energy.  The heavy processing industries such as oil refining, chemical, mining, and mineral processing, and others use a great deal of energy to make their products.  Most major industries are now finding that their energy bills are increasing and the regulations on emissions are becoming stricter.

Since the membership is comprised of senior individuals from companies that are responsible to manage the use of energy while producing the products at the quality and quantity needed, this SIG members are very interested in understanding the relationship between automation-related metrics and the energy consumed metrics.

Energy Management SIG Formation
This SIG has recently been formed to tackle the increased importance of energy.  The members of this SIG are interested in what others are doing to mitigate the use of energy, while maintaining production and quality.  Members come from a variety of backgrounds, but have energy management as a common goal.  Several are part of their company’s energy management team that is tasked to look for ways to improve their energy-related costs.  Others are part of the automation or engineering management that need to know how they are doing relative to their peers.

Energy Metrics Relation to Other Metrics
The goal of this SIG is to find ways that allow participants to use energy metrics as one form of value created by practices that their company uses.  Of course, energy management is not just an automation effectiveness issue, but automation surely can have an impact on the energy consumed.  Other factors such as process design, management teams, and leadership also have an impact on the energy usage.  This team’s goal is to be able to relate these practices and measures to other metrics.  By doing this as part of the Benchmarking Consortium, the metrics can be analyzed down to comparable industries, regions of the world, and specific plants.  The goal is to allow participants to learn how they can save on energy consumption in their plants.

For more information on this SIG and how to join, contact your Client Manager or John Wason at info@arcweb.com.

Advanced Process Control Benchmarking Special Interest Group

Most of the process industry members of the Benchmarking Consortium utilize advanced process control (APC) at their plants.  For many, it would be impossible to achieve the level of quality and throughput without this important tool.  While some members are relative new-comers to the technology, many members have been using APC for about as long as the technology has existed.  They all agree that it requires a high degree of skill to implement, and a strong policy and practices to maintain the models behind the controllers.  They also agree that it is possible to learn from others when it comes to this technology.

Linear Multivariable Predictive Control Is the Focus
There are many definitions of advanced process control, so one of the first efforts of the special interest group was to be specific about what kind of APC was the focus of this SIG.  The group’s consensus was to concentrate on the most popular APC based on linear models.  Sometimes referred to as MPC or MVC, or often just understood to be APC, the group decided that a strong definition was in order.

The SIG membership is of course free to take the focus anywhere they want it to go, as long as it pertains to APC.  With that in mind, the APC SIG has been looking at metrics about projects as well as operations recently.

Collective Learning from Experience
Every member of the working group is either using APC or is investigating the use of it for their facilities.  As new members quickly find out, there is a wealth of information that can be shared even among rival companies.  The information shared is not of the competitive kind such as profitability, but rather of the “what works” and “what doesn’t” kind of information.  The metrics that have been created so far are useful to members to look beyond whether the APC is “on” or “off”, and find out if it is really doing the job it was installed to do.

For more information on this SIG and how to join, contact your Client Manager or John Wason at jwason@arcweb.com.

Alarm Management Benchmarking Special Interest Group (SIG)

Operator Effectiveness
When it comes to making product, safely and efficiently, with the lowest possible cost, the console operator is very important.  Alarms are an important component of the operator’s set of tools.  Along with the process control system, alarms are intended to provide early warning when the process has deviated from normal operation.

The membership is made of experienced professionals that have seen the results of good and bad alarm management processes.  They know that extreme situations such as “alarm showers” can lead to bad decisions.  They're united in the common goal to make their plant’s and their company’s alarm management strategy and practices the best in their industry.

Alarm Management SIG Formation
The Benchmarking Consortium from the outset has put a strong focus on the effectiveness of people in operating facilities.  One of the most important indicators of whether the operator is focused on the job of making product is the amount of work load imposed by the process and the system in the form of alarms.  This special interest group is investigating alarm management from a variety of metric views.  Just looking at the average number of alarms per operator in the plant is not sufficient.  While it might tell you that on average the plant is among its peers in industry, it doesn’t tell the member if there are extremes that are masked by averages.

EEMUA, ISA, and Other Alarm Standards
The SIG members are making use of the well established guidelines put out by EEMUA (Engineering Equipment and Materials Users' Association: www.eemua.org).  It is also looking at other standards bodies such as ISA, and looking to automation suppliers to help them in the establishment of a good alarm management program.

The goal of this SIG is to provide a balanced and consistent measure of success for their individual alarm management programs.  They want to make sure that the variety of alarm metrics can provide meaningful guidance to the membership.  They are a creative group, and highly consensus motivated, because they realize that metrics and the resulting benchmarks need to be valuable to all members.  In the end their goal is to be able to take action based on facts they obtain from the metrics they submit and those of their peers.

For more information on this SIG and how to join, contact your Client Manager or John Wason at jwason@arcweb.com.

Safety Systems Benchmarking Special Interest Group (SIG)

The topic of safety systems invariably ends up in a wash of technical jargon.  Of all the technologies deployed in a process plant, none is more important to the health, safety, and well-being of the facility and the workers than safety systems.  Often referred to as Safety Instrumented Systems or SIS, the systems are designed to literally be the constant watch dog of the plant to make sure that if anything goes wrong, the plant will shut down safely.

Safety Standards, Regulations, and Practices
The focus of this group is to look beyond the well documented equipment that make up today’s safety instrumented systems. There are standards such as IEC61511, IEC61508, and ISA 84.01-2004 that are the basis for process companies deploying safety systems.  These standards go into excruciating detail, to the non-safety specialist.  Even with the level of detail, there is still room for interpretation and creation of a company’s own best practices.

Practices Is the SIG’s Focus
The membership of this SIG consists of experienced safety system professionals.  So what possibly can they learn?  The group was formed to investigate the areas of practices used in the deployment, maintenance, and overall governance of safety systems by owner/operators.  The tightly written standards leave room for options.  Simply put, the group wants to learn what options work best.

The key to this is to have well defined metrics.  The members, of course, have some common terms that come with the specialty of safety systems.  However, it is important that the terms used are understood by all participants of the metrics.  The core group that make up this SIG believe that others will want to participate in the metrics developed so it is important that the benchmark comparisons are comparing “apples to apples”.

For more information on this SIG and how to join, contact your Client Manager or John Wason at jwason@arcweb.com.

Process Automation System Lifecycle Management Special Interest Group (SIG)

Users of process automation systems have struggled with the issue of determining when the useful life of their system is over.  Since these systems are crucial to the success of operations from so many aspects, having a strategy based on best practices is essential.  Modern process automation systems are comprised of many components that each have different life expectancies.  Suppliers have worked in concert with their clients to provide replacements for obsolete components that in many cases have extended the life far beyond the original expectation.

End-of-Life Standards and Practices
The focus of this group is to help determine what the current state of the industry is, and how it relates to best practices.  There are no industry accepted standards that provide a formula for owner/operators to determine the end of life for their process control systems.  The closest standards relate to such issues as “Responsible Care” which is the chemical industry’s global voluntary initiative under which companies, through their national associations, work together to continuously improve their health, safety, and environmental performance, and to communicate with stakeholders about their products and processes.  These and other standards that relate to the consequences of not operating safely are indirectly impacted by the potential of control systems failures.

Practices Is the SIG’s Focus
The membership of this SIG consists of experienced process control system professionals.  They not only understand the technologies but also business processes that relate to their respective company project justification policies and practices.  So what possibly can they learn?  The group was formed to investigate the areas of practices used in the deployment, maintenance, and overall strategies and practices for managing control system obsolesce by owner/operators.  The SIG members want to learn from each other as to what approaches work best.

In addition, SIG members want to share metrics that work.  The key to this is to have well defined metrics.  The members, of course, have some common terms that come with the use of process control systems.  However, it is important that the terms used are understood by all participants of the metrics.  The core group that make up this SIG believe that others will want to participate not just to learn about metrics, but equally important to share strategies, practices, and lessons learned.

For more information on this SIG and how to join, contact your Client Manager or John Wason at jwason@arcweb.com.

Note there is also a current survey on the topic.

Japanese Benchmarking Special Interest Group (SIG)

ARC launched a Japanese Benchmarking Special Interest Group in 2008.  Most major oil and chemical companies are members of this SIG.  The SIG members meet once a quarter to discuss benchmarking related issues of interest to them. 

To join this SIG, please email Yanagimoto-san at kyanagimoto@arcweb.com.