Quality system plant manager

Quality. The plant operated by Synthetic Chemicals Ltd. operates within a quaUty management system, which complies with British Standard (BS) 5750 and ISO 9001, Part 1. 

A fundamental problem that occurs even in fully industrialized countries and large international companies, is that whereas many smaller boiler plant managers purchase well-designed and efficient boilers, pumps, and auxiliaries from recognized quality manufacturers and distributors, the design and construction of FW tanks and even the overall boiler house system may be placed in the hands of persons with inadequate training and experience. 

In-plant management practices may often control the volume and quality of the treatment system influent. Volume reduction can be attained by process wastewater segregation from noncontact water, by recycling or reuse of noncontact water, and by the modification of plant processes. Control of spills, leakage, washdown, and storm runoff can also reduce the treatment system load. Modifications may include the use of vacuum pumps instead of steam ejectors, recycling caustic soda solution rather than discharging it to the treatment system, and incorporation of a more efficient solvent recovery system. 

To provide plant management with a forum to exercise their responsibility for the establishment and maintenance of an adequate and effective quality system. 

The material balance control system is called on to compensate for very low frequency disturbances (e.g., plant management decisions for changes in the production rate, once every two weeks, month, or longer). On the other hand, the product quality control system is called on to ensure the operation of the plant against higher-frequency disturbances (once every half a minute, minute, hour, or day). This difference is the basis for the decomposition of the material balance and product quality control systems. It works as follows Figure 25.9 shows the amplitude ratio versus frequency for the material balance and product quality control systems. 

The head of the quality function has the overall responsibility for the quality systems at the site or across the company. He or she is not the single responsible person to produce a quality product that responsibility belongs to the head of manufacturing. This distinction may not always be clearly understood. To delineate the division of responsibility more effectively, the head of quality is responsible for ensuring that the requirements are effectively communicated and understood by plant management and an effective compliance and quality system is developed and implemented to achieve those requirements. It is the responsibility of the head of manufacturing to ensure that the system is properly supported. 

These two events are directly linked to malpractices, undetected through the quality assurance system. The management structure chosen for building the plant (mainly in the view of distributing the contracts between participant countries) rendered the quality control probably more difficult. It should be noted yet that, as a whole, building deficiencies contribute only marginally to the number of significant events. 

The detailed plaiming of engineering quality management is a matter of procedures deciding what checks, reviews, and audits will be made, how they will be made, and when they will be made. The quality system may have to comply with the requirements of standards such as the IS09000 series, or the plant owner s stipulations. A few general principles to bear in mind are the following. 

Such an assessment may in fact affect the management of the project and the entire quality system required for the design assessment and the construction phase, by ensuring that the design assumptions in terms of global plant safety are realized in the design. 

As discussed earlier in this chapter, the main requirements to ensure an appropriate safety culture are similar to those which are advocated in quality management systems. These include active participation by the workforce in error and safety management initiatives, a blame-free culture which fosters the free flow of information, and an explicit policy which ensures that safety considerations will always be primary. In addition both operations and management staff need feedback which indicates that participation in error reduction programs has a real impact on the way in which the plant is operated and systems are designed. 

Control systems will play a key role in future distributed plants ]139,145]. As a rule of thumb, plants will be smaller and simpler, but the control systems will be much more advanced, of a standard not known today. Plant personnel for operation and managing will ultimately no longer be required, except for start-up, shutdown, and services. This is a shift from a regulatory to a servo role, supported by a sophisticated sequence control. Control is needed for safety issues, operability, and product quality control. Sensors have a central role to provide the information needed for control and modeling and simulation is needed for process models. 

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