e-Permit To Work System for Industries

I have worked in a petrochemicals complex during its commissioning. While I grasp the need and importance of a Permit To Work system, I feel that the system is very basic and requires a boost of 21st century gadgetry to help implement it more effectively and stringently.

A sample permit to work can be viewed here.

A 'permit to work', 'work permit' or 'permit' is a signed consent given by the in-charge of a particular plant to the party carrying out some repair or maintenance work in this plant. This permit to work enlists the details of the equipment, the nature of the work to be carried out and the agency carrying out the work, the time for which this permit is valid, the safety precautions to be taken before carrying out the work, the names of the issuing, receiving and the approving personnel and renewal and closing details of the permit. Every issued permit has to be renewed if the enlisted jobs are not completed and have to be closed after the work is completed. The idea is that the issuing personnel will inspect the work area along with the receiving personnel before issuing the permit. He will mark down his observations and any special requirements specific to the job to be carried out and then issue the permit on site. This later has to be approved by the approving authority.

 Existing Flow Chart

What actually happens is that the receiver will try to locate the issuer who usually is the engineer in-charge of a particular area. Since this engineer-in-charge is in-charge of a number of areas instead of just one he may or may not be present in the area where the receiver has to carry out the job. In most of the cases the issuer issues a permit sitting in the office where the permit books are maintained and stored, based on trust, without ever inspecting the area where the work is to be carried out in order to avoid carrying the messy carbon paper and the different permit books which are heavy. The issuer has to maintain a separate register to keep track of open and closed permits. The receiver has to then locate the approving personnel who is never available in the same office. By the time the permits are issued its already 2 precious hours of the day wasted before which the job can be started. And since this 2 hour delay is so common the receiver secretly already tells his men to starts that job in the area before even getting the permit issued. And since this is a preventive measure its usefulness is realized only in case of a rare accident rather than in more frequent safe completion of jobs. So, basically there are more deterrents in the effective implementation of the Permit To Work system, than there are encouragements.

A list of some of the main deterrents and shortfalls in the systems at present:

1. Using carbon paper for making copies, dates back to the age of typewriters and results in erroneous and illegible entries
2. Making 3 copies for each permit issued is a waste of paper
3. Handling three permit books for Working at height, Cold work (regular work) and Hot work (involving welding, grinding, cutting etc)
4. Delay caused by traveling to the site and coming back to the office to issue the permit.
5. Delay as a result of unavailability of approving personnel
6. Often by-passing the site inspection before issue of permit
7. Maintaining a register to keep track of renewals and closure of permits
8. Keeping track of permit books in stock and sending them for printing again and again
9. Predetermined times at which the permits are issued (say in between 10:00-10:30 in A shifts only.
10. Minor details being missed out due to manual entry
11. Maintaining records of permits on paper and in books for 3 years requires a lot of space
12. Immediate issue of emergency maintenance permits is not possible
13. There is no information to Overall Plant In-charge  in case permits are issued, renewed or closed, thereby rendering him clueless about the work being carried out under his shift in various areas of the factory.

I came up with the idea of making this process all electronic for industries. For that we need

The Gadgetry

1. Central Server for Permit To Work System
2. Tablet PCs with a camera, WiFi and NFC capability
3. A touch-input friendly application designed for the table
4. Integration of this system with the e-mail server for immediate notifications

 This is how the system would work.

New Flow Chart

The receiver has to ask the issuer to be present at the area where he intends to carry out some work. The Issuer carries his tablet PC to the plant in question. The Issuer opens the application on the tablet PC and selects the type of permit that is to be issued (Hot, Cold or Height). He enters the details of the job to be carried out. He goes through the checklist and enters his observations. He clicks a time and location stamped picture of the area he has inspected, which is the area where the work is going to be carried out. If any point is not conforming to the checklist or the minimum requirements to be taken care of for that particular job, the form can be saved to continue later when the necessary requirements are met. He digitally signs the permit by touching his ID card (NFC based) to the NFC port thereby signing the permit. He then asks the receiver to sign the permit digitally using his ID card. After these two signatures a serial number will be generated and the e-Permit will be sent to the Central (PTW) Server which then communicates with  the e-mail server of the organization which sends an e-mail notification to the approving authority. The e-mail will have the e-Permit form with the pictures of the locations that was generated in the tablet PC.The approving authority can finally approve the permit by sending back a confirmatory reply or the opposite. Renewals can be carried out on request with provision for additional details and pictures to be added during renewal.

Using this new scheme organizations can not only implement the PTW system effectively with much ease but can also bring in a system to keep track of the kinds of permits being issued and the frequent areas where these permits are being issued to find out the cause of recurrence of similar problems which are being rectified. Definitely opens new doors.

Business Ideas - Topic of the day (15-07-14)

The only source to earn more money in less time is nothing but with a good business model. So What to do and what are the options available?

Options:

1. Setting up a new business unit

2. Hiring an existing industry on lease

3. Looking for an existing industry for sale

4. Browse on internet for any ideas

5. Next future market - Scrap Handling

6. Handling biological matter in collaboration with a municipality.

1. Setting up a new business unit:

This needs a lot of effort in the initial stages and is to be well planned. More time is required with huge man hours. This is a risk based option where in the feasibility, market conditions etc plays a major role.

2. Hiring an existing industry on lease

This is a good option. The only requirement is an investment and an initial market study. Pay the company, hire it, explore market for rigorous demand and start producing the product at peak capacity. Make Profit and pay the owner. But the margin in this is less as some part of the profits are being paid against the lease.

3. Looking for an existing industry for sale

Found one -  http://www.cencorefining.org/ which says that "CENCO Refining Company is located in Santa Fe Springs, California, near Los Angeles.  The 50,000 barrel per day refinery has been sold.  However, some units and equipment that are not part of the sale remain available." Buy some equipment which may suit to set up an establishment of your interest at a relatively less price and reduce the initial investment. 

4. Browse on internet for any ideas

Lot of projects and business ideas are not put into use because of lack of funds, time and technology. Select a project or a business idea and work on it

5. Next future market - Scrap Handling

There is a great future for scrap handling. Currently the goods being manufactured have less life time. This is one of the greatest marketing strategy implemented jointly by all the industries. Even though a product can be designed for a more life time, it is designed for a lesser time in-order to enhance the year-on-year sales of the company. Because of this strategy, the life time of the products has come down and there is a lot and lot of scrap being generated. This scrap has a real competitive price in the market. The main scrap being the e-waste generated from the silicon cities all across the world has a huge potential. Even though this industry has an add-on advantage of government subsidies, wherein the government will provide enough benefits for clearing the scrap and reusing the material further.

6. Handling biological matter in collaboration with a municipality.

Municipalities all across the world are currently facing the problem of handling biological matter that is being generated on day to day basis. There is enough technological growth in this area wherein the matter is treated with a bacteria to convert it into useful energy and also to compress its size by increasing the energy density. This reduction in space can be used for further storing of the matter as well in transforming the matter into energy rich. The government also provide subsidies in this area, as this is a part of society development.

Ganzfeld experiment and psi.

I was reading an article about the ganzfeld ("whole field" in German) experiments today. These experiments are widely renowned for being the first scientific attempt at proving the existence of telepathy.

The ganzfeld experiment involved two people, one of whom was termed the 'sender' and the other, the 'receiver'. The receiver was placed in an isolated environment from the sender. The sender had to look at an image and had to try to relay the details of the image over to the sender, through psi. The sender had to describe the image to the person conducting the test and later identify the image that the sender had seen, from among four images in which one was the actual image and other three were decoys. If left to chance, the receiver would have a strike rate of only 25% (1 out of 4). But the experiments turned out a result of more than that. Even though there were a number of shortcomings in the procedure which even the experimenter accepted, this experiment caught my interest because of the somewhat sound logic based on which the results were to be obtained.

Psi, is the name given to a unknown factor, the presence of which helps people perform actions which cannot be explained by known physical and biological mechanisms. Call it the dark force or the sixth sense, if you may.

We hear numerous anecdotes wherein people are able to foresee or get an inkling of events which have not yet occurred or have occurred in isolation. But in almost all the cases we cannot surely say that the foresight or inkling was a result of extra sensory perception. The perception which does not rely on the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The intriguing thing is that most of these foresights, inklings and premonitions come to us in our dreams, when we are in deep sleep. Which brings me to the important point I want to make.

We all perceive the world to be what it is through the five senses we know of, and that is why extra sensory perception seems so surreal to us.

Take for example floating on water on your back, replicating a state of weightlessness. I, for one, feel vulnerable doing that. Concerned whether my breathing is in sync, whether there is water finding its way into my ears, whether or not I have floated adrift too far away, whether I have been in this state for too long, why am I doing this. All these thoughts occupy my mind and drag me back into the world of these five senses. Compare this to the state of deep sleep. A state of sleep in which our mind is free from the clutter of these random thoughts and we create a world of our own with such detail, that it seems real. We often don't even remember the dream as soon as we wake up. Just goes to show the untapped power of our minds. But even in this state we are wrapped up in a blanket made out of the five senses, which is so cozy, that even the loss of one of the senses (eg. weightlessness caused by an endless fall)  in our dreams, pulls us out of that state and wakes us up.

People who have lost the ability to see are known to have developed the power to see through touch and hearing (echo location). People who have lost the ability to hear are known to have developed the power to hear though sight (lip read). So it is known that the loss of one sense strengthens the others and our dependence on them. .

Imagine ourselves in an environment which does not give us any sensory inputs in the five forms we know of and you may just as well imagine yourself developing psi.

Another form of sea water

What if we create an another form of sea water in solid shape which can act as a land for many living beings who are thirsty enough for some piece of land.

One form of sea water in solid shape is the Ice Burgs, however they change with temperature and are not suitable for habitants.

Oceans are rich in salts and minerals. These salts and minerals are in dissolved state in the sea water and when extracted they will form a solid shape at ambient temperature. Whether the extraction of this salt content from the sea water will reduce the level of water to such an extent ?

Does these salts really required for the aquatic life ?

Is it possible to extract the underwater sand and build an island or extend the existing land surface of a country or bring back the already submerged islands by refilling similar to the one UAE is building but in large extent?

Can we cool a part of sea water and create the glaciers again?

Stairway to orbit.

This came off as an afterthought while penning down the previous post. Is it possible? Tell me how its not.

Consider this:

I am walking up a seemingly endless stairway with all the equipment I require to battle out the journey. I reach a point where it ends. And it ends where some imaginary orbit intersects it.

I jump off this stairway in a suitable direction, attaining the orbital speed required in this case, and lock myself into that orbit, for... ever after.

Now just hold on and reflect.

Did we miss out, rocket fuel? ... YES.
Did we miss out, supercomputers? ... YES
Did we attain Escape Velocity? ... NO

Wait a minute... all this time we were taught about escape velocity in Physics at school, were we being fooled? Is escape velocity ever attained in our satellite and space launches? Or is it just a theory?

Shuttling excess water from Earth.

Complying with the crazy ideas generated while encountering day to day engineering shortcomings by us this particular idea should be given some serious thought as it might just be, the solution to the problem of rising sea level engulfing our landmasses as a result of global warming.

Don't ask me, how a lunch time discussion on death and different ways of administering capital punishment deviated into solving the greatest environmental threat we face, because that happens all the time in the porta cabin. So this is how it goes....

A question arose, "Can we not dump all the excess water from the melting ice cap into space." Immediately, someone  interjected by saying, "Can you imagine the number of trips required and the cost involved?" 

Having read about the recent PSLV-C23 launch from India, and the info-graphic depicting its trajectory outside the atmosphere was floating in the sub conscious somewhere. It was a Eureka moment as that very picture in this context conjured up this theory:

What you need:

1. A tube from the bottom of the ocean to a suitable satellite orbit
2. A plunger which sits flush inside this tube 
3. A rocket capable of accelerating the plunger to escape velocity for the length of the tube

 

What you need to do:

1. Build the tube
2. Insert the plunger into the tube
3. Connect the rocket to the plunger
4. Fire the rocket.

What will happen:

The plunger while accelerating will create a suction in the trailing part pulling the water along the length of the tube setting up a nice siphon which will put the water from the depths of the ocean into a nice and neat orbit around the earth. 

We could even have our own planetary ring as a result of this. err.. which would have some fish floating around in that ring which, if I was fish, I would not be very happy about, but we could put a strainer to filter them out at the bottom of the tube.

Do remember to believe that this could be the only way to curb the rising sea level, which if left to rise could see us all running for the mountains pretty soon. It is thus thought, that we are going to make it happen at any cost.

Since this is going to bring a lot of 'how are you going to...' questions, I want to list out a few immediate flaws with this idea.

1. Sub Zero temperatures in the higher layers of the atmosphere will freeze the water flowing in the pipes. 
•  A valid argument. I thank the buzzkill for irking my thought further. insulating the pipe with heat tracing, would be an utter waste of resources. And since I am living in the future, I'm thinking of geosynchronous satellites with solar concentrators, directing the solar radiation from the sun onto the affected area of the tube to eliminate icing.
  
2.  We need the exhaust of the rocket pushing against something for this to work. It cannot push against the water that it is supposed to pull along.
• Well, that is true. But then, we can have the rocket outside the tube holding the plunger through some magnetic magic. Which surely is possible since, as of today, we are able to guide invisible particles form the innards of atoms through accelerators built underground and across national borders, as per will.
  
3.  Construction of this contraption.
•  ....................

While I do have some ideas, I am willing to listen to yours' first. So let's bring it on guys.

Get cracking or debunking.