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Selection and Training of Console Operators

Presented By

Claudio Hormazabal - ENAP

Conference:

courtesy of ENAPDid you know that every day there are three events of abnormal conditions in the productive industry? That is, fatality, accidents to people, damage to equipment, release of polluting products into the atmosphere, loss of containment, plant detention and failure to specify products. If I want to improve, where do I start ?, Operational Excellence (EO) is a good start since it helps to define a work route. The EO speaks of obtaining a high level of efficiency in all areas of the business, in order to maximize the profitability of the company. If we want to apply it, we must be clear about the orientation of the company. The refineries belong to an industry focused on production and the efforts of all areas must be aligned to achieve their goals, providing support to the productive system that works in turn 24/7. Inside the personnel in turn, by its level of influence in the attainment of the productive goals, appears as key personnel the console operator (OC). This has the support of field operators to perform certain maneuvers and a level of supervision that facilitates access to resources and provides guidelines. Given the above, are we investing the most time or resources in selecting and properly training the operators of Consola? Probably the answer is negative and it would not be strange to see that the field operators if they have a career would work with several instances of training and the OC has a knowledge acquisition process graduated with the passage of time, mostly due to the events that have faced and that have allowed him to achieve some expertise. This causes two problems; There is no homogenous expertise of the OCs nor is there a minimum level of knowledge assured. How many times have you gone through an operations console and notes that the person sitting is not the right person for the position, however in the processes of selection of OC no one fails or the failure rate is minimal ?. Then something is not doing well. One phase of the innovation process is to see how they do the best in certain activities to achieve high returns. The aeronautical industry takes us a great leap forward and can show us a path to which the nuclear industry has joined and even some services such as firefighters and elite groups of the armed forces. An exploration of these as well as a review of OC studies can illuminate us about the path we should take, although this can test our paradigms and beliefs. In this presentation I will develop three paradigms that appear in the topics of selection and training of console operators.

Claudio Hormazabal, ENAPClaudio Hormazábal is a  Coker/Alky Plant Manager , with 20 years of experience  as a Chemical Engineer. He spent 15 years of his career with ENAP. Claudio Began his career as a Project Engineer at ENAEX where performance technical service for the PANNA 3 (Ammonia Nitrate Plant) project. Working in ENAP he joined  in 2006 to the Coker Complex Project where he participated as Project Engineer and later to be appointed as leader of the Operations team to training, commissioned and start-up the CoKing unit. He Holds a B.S Chemical Engineering , MBA from Adolfo Ibañez University and a Coaching certification.

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