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18th Outage Management for Power Plants

Discovering, Developing & Defining Productivity and Procedures to Improve Outage Planning, Scheduling and Execution

30 Jul-1 Aug 2019
JW Marriott | Austin, TX, United States of America

marcus evans Noth America

What our delegates think of us:

An interview with Andrew Valencia, PE, Sr. Vice President – Generation at Lower Colorado River Authority

Ahead of the 18th Outage Management for Power Plants, we spoke with Andrew Valencia, PE, Sr. Vice President at Lower Colorado River  Authority about the Lean Manufacturing Principals in Power Plants.

Where do you find value with lean manufacturing in outage maintenance? Are there any areas that create setbacks? 

Basically what lean is—it’s the elimination of waste. Your whole goal is to try to remove as much of the non-value added processes and get people’s time to be focused on things that add value. In an outage, you’re trying to coordinate a tremendous amount of work in a short period of time. Usually, you’re running multiple contracts in which your downtime is costing you revenue because your units are not running and your whole goal is to try to coordinate the outage to get done safely and as quickly as possible, at the lowest possible cost. When you look at the logistics, there are a number of lean manufacturing principals that can be used to help you optimize your schedules and the coordination of your work. Lean manufacturing was developed in the manufacturing sector and we don’t necessarily manufacture anything. However, it is very applicable to our business because when you look at some of the specific tools of lean manufacturing, they’re very applicable to maintenance activities. 

In your opinion, what is the main reason organization’s are hesitant to implement lean principals into their organizational development plans? 

It is a commitment, you really have to change and think about the way you do business. There are some very basic principals in lean and it is not that it’s that difficult, people just really struggle with implementing it. Another aspect of lean that makes it so difficult, it is something that takes constant nurturing and that’s the commitment from a management standpoint. You have to be committed to it because it takes constant attention. 

How do you expect lean implementation to prosper in the upcoming years? 

It is a challenge to implement. A lot of these principals are very simple and most people have some innate ability to understand this just by things that they normally do. For example, the grocery store—most people will go in the same door and follow the same path because they know where everything is and that is essentially a lean principal. Overtime, you have figured out what is the most optimal way to get to the grocery store—because most people don’t like to go anyway. Most people have a very innate way of doing things to try to make it easier or faster, the trick is trying to get people to apply it to our business. It’s a challenge because it forces people to think about things different. There are people in any organization that are wired this way. If you can find the people that are wired to think like this and get them involved in the process, then that is how you can make a lot of headway. Also, it takes some commitment on a management part since it is a big shift on how to do things.   

Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get to where you’re at in your career? 

I’ve been in power generation for 29 years. I have a mechanical engineering degree and I started as a plant engineer at a power plant in Dallas. I’ve had a lot of years of experience in several different areas. Some of previous roles include: shift supervisor, operator, maintenance manager, operations manager and plant manager at several different types of plants. 

What are you looking forward to most about speaking at the 18th Outage Management for Power Plants Conference? 

Power plants are my passion, but specifically with lean, it is always something that has fascinated me because it is a different way of looking at how we can do business. If it’s applied correctly and applied with commitment, you can get a tremendous amount of value out of it. It is all about making things safer, faster and less expensive and those should be goals of any plant manager or anyone that manages a facility.

Andrew Valencia is one of our keynote speakers

Why you should attend this marcus evans conference?

Practical insights from active practitioners in your sector

• Wes Havard
  Regional Manager, Operational Excellence and Human Performance
  Luminant

• Lynn Harper
  Superintendent, Plant Overhaul Management
  Xcel Energy

• Randall Earley Outage Manager Quad Cities Station Exelon 

• Derrick Ivory, Manager, Outage Services
  Vistra Energy 

• Brian Reeder, Maintenance Superintendent, Electric Generation, Outage Management
  NIPSCO
  

Case study: Applying Lean Manufacturing Principals in Power Plants to Reduce Cost and Optimize Production (30th of July, 8:30am)

• Outlining the initial steps to transition to lean practices
• Identifying value by limiting waste to reduce the complexity of overall processes
• Reviewing differences in overall production with and without lean principals
• Evaluating successes of implementation into power plants

For registration pricing and multiple attendee discounts, please contact:

Melini Hadjitheori 
melinih@marcusevanscy.com