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Reliance Industries Limited is the largest private sector company in India. For the 20,000 instruments in their Patalganga petrochemical plant they installed a calibration system that improved the efficiency ofcalibration operations considerably.
Reliance Industries Limited is a Fortune Global 500 company and the largest private sector company in India with businesses in the textile, petrochemical, refining,oil & gas, energy and materials value chain. Backward vertical integration has been the cornerstone of the evolution and growth of Reliance.The Group’s activities span exploration and production of oil and gas, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, textiles and retail. The Patalganga plant petrochemical production plant is spread overmore than 200 acres on the banks of the River Patalganga, 70 km from Mumbai. Patalganga comprises seven production plants: PTA, PX, LAB, PSF, PFY, Utility and Energy Center. and employs 3,000 people.
Calibration is very important and one of the success factors in the Patalganga plant’s operations. Mr Ranjan Bhattacharya, Vice President of Instrumentation, states, “it ensures that the end-product has high quality, as it is process control that ultimately determines the quality of the products produced”. Calibration must also meet the plant’s ISO9001, 14001, 18001 requirements. Overall, calibration requirements are considered high, as they need to meet the traceability requirements ofquality for final products & governing bodies.”
In total, the Patalganga plant has around 20,000 instruments. Process parameters mostly calibrated include pressure, flow and temperature. The Patalganga plant follows a calibration plan that determines the calibration frequency of each instrument.” Mr Keyur G. Vora, General Manager of Instrumentation (PTA & PX), explains, “the calibration frequency of most instruments is between 1 and 3 years. According to criticality, instrumentsare classified into three categories that determine the calibration frequency: 1-Vital, 2-Essential, and 3-Desirable. For the instruments classified as Vital, the calibration frequency is 1 year. Some criticalinstruments, such as analyzers, are calibrated as much as once a week”. Approximately 30% of the installations are calibrated per year; these include mainly switches and gauges. Because calibration is considered a critical task at the Patalganga plant, its own engineers and technicians perform all calibrations. Calibrations have therefore not beenoutsourced to external service companies. They are performed in workshops and out in the field, and the results are entered and documentedinto SAP maintenance management system.
The number-one criterion for choosing their calibration equipment was accuracy, followed by the stability of accuracy. Other aspects included the flexibility of calibration by choosing appropriate master instruments to meet Reliance’s day-to-day needs, as well as service support for recalibrating the master instruments. “The task was to search, choose and install a top-of-the-line calibration system that would ultimately work as a reference to other plants. Ideally, a similar system could be used in other Reliance Industries plants as well”, Mr Bhattacharya remarks. “The quality, accuracy, technical features and ease-of use made Beamex a strongalternative when assessing the different suppliers and calibration equipment”, Mr Vora continues. “Beamex was able to meet our demanding requirements.”
The Patalganga plant has been utilizing several Beamex MCS100 Workstations for the last three years. Once installed and in use, the results have been very convincing and provided the opportunity to substantially improve the efficiency of calibration operations.“The average time it takes to do one pressure calibration has droppedfrom 2 hours to 30 minutes using the Beamex MCS100 system”, Mr Vora and Mr Bhattacharya affirm. This means that the calibration time required per pressure calibration has been reduced by 75%. The automated calibration functionality of the MCS100 makes this possible. Performing calibrations is fast and efficient. In addition to this, the system isuser-friendly and convenient, which means that no intensive training or unnecessary high skills is needed to operate the system. This is another way of achieving cost-savings.”
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