Reflecting Abstraction Hierarchy of a Chemical Processing System on Standard Operating Procedures

Abstract

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are an integral part of everyday operations in oil & gas and petrochemical industries. Also, a majority of incidents in these processing operations are ascribed to issues associated with SOPs. Although there have been continuous efforts to improve quality of SOPs and ensure accurate perception of information in the SOPs, designing SOPs that allow for workers to adapt to changing or unexpected conditions while still adhering to the procedure remains a persistent gap. As one way to address such gap, this study employs an ecological approach to understand the nature of the system domain and its relations to SOPs. First, this study models a 3-phase separation system, a common oil-water separation process, using an abstraction-decomposition space (ADS) as a functional structure of the system. Next, we apply abstraction hierarchy (AH), one of two dimensions of ADS, to the steps of the SOPs used in the 3-phase separation system. Results show that a majority of steps correspond to physical levels of the AH. Based on the results, several implications for the design and implementation of SOPs from the current study are discussed.