To say that Joel is passionate about his field is a gross understatement. Joel realized early on that he had the aptitude and ability for both manufacturing processes and economics—stand-out qualities amongst his fellow engineers.
At Monsanto, which later became Bayer, he started as an Electrical Instrumentation Maintenance Engineer, where he developed systematic problem-solving techniques, leading towards efficient troubleshooting and identification of the root cause from multiple angles. As he advanced to Electrical Maintenance Reliability Engineer, Joel’s journey intersected with an early version of Emerson’s Asset Management System (AMS) Device Manager, which he eagerly installed in the herbicides operating unit for instrument and valve maintenance.
Joel recalls one event where he was monitoring and assessing alerts inside the AMS Device Manager application, where he discovered that a mass meter on a continuous process was showing a drive overrange alert that was increasing over time. Utilizing the embedded diagnostics and edge analytics within the meter, AMS Device Manager indicated a likely coating or plugging condition within the sensor tubes. The board operator didn’t notice any problem from the control room console, but Joel asked for a back flushing sequence, just in case. This cleared up mass meter plugging, and allowed Joel to later review the results with the area’s technical specialist and confirm that a latent problem had been averted. This early success was quickly promoted to Monsanto’s management team via an ‘AMS One-Page Success Sharing’.
This example was noteworthy because it not only proved the power of predictive monitoring as a means to avoid major downtime events— one that could have cost $1M in lost production, let alone repair costs—but it also began to reshape the minds of those around the Maintenance and Production Unit departments that Operations should embrace, care, and take Reliability seriously.
During one of the control valve field evaluation assessment surveys, Joel identified a severe packing leak in a control valve that was impacting loop performance. Understanding both the mechanical and production sides of this scenario, Joel recognized that problems with this asset posed more than just the inherent risk of downtime. He had to consider the costs if the valve needed to be removed from the pipeline and serviced, but also realize that every hour that the valve was underperforming likely equated to some appreciable loss in throughput and/or product quality.
Because it was identified early on, a corrective rebuild was scheduled during normal clean-out times, leading to hundreds of thousands in cost savings and lost revenue, with the added benefit of being able to control the maintenance schedule of the valve maintenance rebuild without enduring a reactive emergency repair. Joel was able to prove the value of the tools, but also advertised the wins to executive leadership to promote and grow the culture of Reliability with stakeholders around his department.
“It’s always been a labor-intensive position to drive reliability to get buy-in. I’m not only a cheerleader, but also keep my contacts and technology knowledge growing while educating others. I have a lot of passion around this topic. I have notoriety in the entire industry and have followed through in proving the worth of these solutions. That drove Experitec to invite me to help lead their customers’ Reliability charge!”
— Joel Holmes
