CRITICAL PATH OR ARROWDIAGRAM PLANNING - EXAMPLES IN PROCESS INDUSTRY #,/St/ I The American Oil Company has actually been

involved in arrow diagram planning for less than two years. We became acquainted with the technique in the summer of 1960 through our association with the Du Pont Company. With the information and instruction obtained from them, we have trained 90 people from 11 of our 12 refineries in arrow diagram planning, in schools conducted at Whiting. In our experience, it takes three days to make a real professional in the technique. We have also had a number of abbreviated sessions presented to approximately 350 persons of about one hour to give our supervisors an impression of what is involved in the technique. The attached comic brochure entitled "Chief Broken Arrow" has been developed and distributed extensively to be used to familiarize personnel with arrow diagram planning as an extremely valuable tool. It is also interesting that our experience has been that this is not a particularly difficult subject to learn and one certainly does not have to be an engineer to master it. Some of our outstanding students have high school educations. We also operate on the basis, insofar as possible, that the person or persons who develop the diagram are the ones who do the job in the field and feel there is considerable continuity and efficiency to be realized in this procedure. To date, we have used arrow diagram planning to the greatest extent on shutdowns. To those of you who may not be familiar with the oil industry, refineries are usually operated on a 7-day week, 24-hour day basis, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. Some of our units may run on this basis for as long as two to three years. Regardless, it is still necessary to shut them down at periodic intervals, depending upon the particular process, for repairs, reconditioning and cleaning. Downtime can be worth thousands of dollars per day and hence shutdowns are usually pushed to the limit from the standpoint of completing the job as quickly as possible. Imagine what happens to the output of our Whiting Refinery when No. 12 pipe still, a 140,000 barrel per day crude unit, is down for a shutdown. In addition to being a real "rat race" proposition, shutdowns of big units involve literally hundreds of jobs to the extent that no one has the mental capacity to keep all facets of the project under control. For example, the last No. 12 pipe still shutdown involved over 2,000 individual jobs. However, with arrow diagram planning, we have a road map of the whole shutdown posted on the wall,which is marked up job by job so that anyone can see at a glance where the shutdown stands. On shutdowns, with the assistance of our Research Department, linear programming has been used to make the calculations on our computer whichare tremendously Without the computer, we would not tedious to do manually on big projects. have progressed as much and the tedious aspects of the arithmetic would certainly have had a discouraging effect. At Whiting, which is a complete refinery that can run 250,000 barrels of crude per day, we have developed shutdown arrow diagrams for all major refinery units which include cat crackers, ultraformers, crude units, power stations, an ammonia plant, heavy oils operations, and a sulfur plant among other operations. operate on an around-the-clock As previously mentioned, refineries basis and continued and normal operation of process units is necessary to maximize profits, prevent fires and disasters and for safety of personnel.

-2For these reasons, we feel arrow diagram planning has considerable possibilities in operations particularly on startups or shutdowns of units which are often inclined to be the most hazardous periods. A number of the persons in the previously mentioned training schools are from the operating part of our business and a brochure on this aspect has also been developed and is attached. We have also used the technique to coordinate the operating personnel's work of shutting down a unit with the mechanical work involved and then the operating work of starting it up again, These integrated diagrams serve the purpose of showing exactly when the operators are finished shutting down a piece of equipment and when the mechanics can take over. Then, when the mechanical work on a piece of equipment is done, it is readily obvious from the arrow diagram that the operators can take over again. Maintenance jobs in our refinery are generally of a small nature and it is usually not practical to devote the time to arrow diagramming them. Instead, these are handled at Whiting on a daily planning program and each foreman is given a tabulation by a planner two days ahead of time listing the jobs that he is to do and the manpower for them. Arrow diagramming does have a very useful and profitable application on maintenance jobs of any size or a repetitive nature. This is illustrated by the C-06 exchangers on our cat crackers. These are slurry exchangers located up in structure of the unit, which have to have the bundles changed about twice a year when they become dirty. This job is done while the cat crackers are running and when first attempted a number of years ago took from 55 to 65 hours. Through efforts and diligence of the supervisors and men trying new techniques and tools, it was finally reduced to 24 hours. Then, early in 1961 it was decided to arrow diagram the job and this is shown on the attached print. The diagram said that we should be doing the job in 12 hours and 35 minutes. After the supervisors recovered from the shock, they went back to work, and have since managed to beat this time. In the field of construction, we are presently using arrow diagram planning on an extensive gasoline blending job and on the construction of an automotive laboratory and have also been using it at Whiting on pipe work, office buildings, equipment installations, unit revamps, etc. In conclusion, we are continuing to search for more applications and improvements in arrow diagram planning, As an example, our Research Department has recently developed a computer program to balance manpower by crafts on jobs to avoid peaks and valleys and to reduce movements of personnel, which is expensive. Updating of estimates on shutdowns as conditions change involves sending a new set of cards through the computer and a revised schedule is available in minutes. A similar updating process is used also to keep construction jobs on schedule. Bar chart print-outs with a computer and a number of other items are also under consideration.

V. K. Moore June 6, 1962 Whiting Refinery American Oil Company

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