Changed sequences of handling empty and full cars. Modified loading times by less than 2 hrs. Result is essentially no demurrage, over the allowed, for the entire site. Rail company changed procedures and operating company changed scheduling practices. Distillation tower has internal damage limiting production rates.
Next outage is scheduled in one year.
If outage taken now to repair damage we will still have to take outage in one year because of parts delivery for other essential projects. With six months of effort, Operations Engineers and Process Engineering could find no solution other than to take an early outage. Identified key operating variables, established allowable ranges for each, and conducted a Designed Experiment. At that level another part of the plant became the bottleneck. All shift operators were trained for new conditions and the operations procedures were modified.