Turnaround engineering: Maintenance projects of large plants by KLINGER Kempchen

The “Münchener Forum Verbindungstechnologie” is a unique trade event held in Munich, Germany. It stands out among similar conferences thanks to its high-profile presentations and workshops that combine three different disciplines: Bolting, sealing and lubricating.

Representing these fields, its latest installment was hosted by three companies: The industrial bolting experts HYTORC, the fastener and fixing technology wholesaler REYHER and the gasket expert KLINGER Kempchen.

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The “Münchener Forum Verbindungstechnologie” takes place every two years. It offers its audience of industry representatives an interesting exchange of knowledge and ideas, networking opportunities and an abundance of topics with a clear focus on practical application. KLINGER Kempchen, Germany’s premier manufacturer of gaskets, compensators and packings, has been a co-host of the event for many years. Klaus Schonebeck, Managing Director of KLINGER Kempchen, explains: “The ‘Münchener Forum Verbindungstechnologie’ brings together three related disciplines and addresses new developments, changes to standards as well as cutting-edge research results and studies.” This apparently also applied to the 9th installment of the conference in Munich. “Bolting under extreme conditions: A case study from the South Pole”, “Challenges to the working world posed by digitalization” and “Design execution requirements as a consequence of the new TA Luft” are just three of the examples of what the event offered its participants. “The ‘Münchener Forum Verbindungstechnologie’ is very popular among CTOs, technical sales representatives, operations managers and technicians, CAE engineers, constructors, maintenance as well as quality assurance personnel,” states Mr. Schonebeck. He adds: “These individuals rarely come into contact with our representatives. In other words, the forum functions as a platform for them to also get insights into our latest developments.”

KLINGER Kempchen holds turnaround engineering workshop at “Münchener Forum Verbindungstechnologie”

Asked about similarities to the “Kempchen Praxistage”, co-host Klaus Schonebeck stresses that this conference does not serve as a vehicle for the promotion of his company’s products and solutions, either. Instead, the participants are here to learn from each other. Next to the already mentioned presentations, this is also achieved by means of workshops held in the course of the event. One such workshop was headed by Torsten Bial, Technical Director at KLINGER Kempchen. His topic: “Turnaround engineering: the preparatory approach to leakage-free commissioning.” Workshop attendance, however, was purely voluntary and it was up to the workshop presenters to attract their own audience. Torsten Bial did this by showing a slide of his hunting dog Eila, promising to make the reason obvious at the end of the session. This minor marketing gag promptly netted him more than half of the attendees.

A technical director and his dog: Torsten Bial and Ayla

Technical Director Torsten Bial provides valuable turnaround insights

Turnarounds differ from projects or routine maintenance in many ways. They include, amongst others, a massive amount of activity within the facility, daily or hourly changes to the general setup, in some cases extreme dependency on the prevailing weather conditions or an abundance of unplanned measures as the result of ongoing inspections and checks. Additionally, scope and scheduling are continuously subjected to change. Material or delivery bottlenecks may occur as a result of unforeseen repairs. Mr. Bial underlined that a turnaround should not be underestimated and that it exerts both a significant physical and mental toll on participating employees. His path to leakage-free commissioning then divided the turnaround into different segments: A basic, an engineering, a coordination, and a turnaround support phase. Mr. Bial’s fresh approach to the art of turnaround engineering was evident on the slides numerous times and earned him several good-natured chuckles from his audience. The first slide of his TAR Support Phase had the caption “Let the games begin”, while the last one from the same phase simply read “Last man standing”. As promised, KLINGER Kempchen’s technical director concluded his workshop with a slide of a totally exhausted Eila.

The accompanying message: “Remain consequent and on target in following up on your turnaround preparations and strategies. This is comparable to the consistency you need to train a spotting dog such as Eila. Success will set in soon, even if you will be dog-tired by the end …”

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A turnaround is a highly-expensive planned period of regeneration in a plant or refinery. During this time, an entire part of the operation is offlined whilst plants are inspected and revamped.