Project Zero™ is a manufacturing excellence initiative to drive companies to improve field operations, and to achieve:

• Zero Process Safety Related Incidents
• Zero Injuries
• Zero Environmental Releases
• Zero Defects

Project Zero™ was first implemented at the Huntsman Chemical’s Port Neches facility — a 4 square mile chemical facility located in southeast Texas. The Port Neches Facility has over 500 employees and 100 contractors with 16 operating units. Beyond the goal of eliminating incidents that can cause injury or even death in plant facilities, Huntsman continues to report significant savings from proactively eliminating defects in the field and improving equipment uptime.

"By increasing the speed and effectiveness of our defect capture process, we are now able to see beyond the tip of the defect ‘iceberg’,” says John Prows, Huntsman’s Vice President of Manufacturing Excellence.

The field operator scans an RFID tag with a handheld mobile computer, pulls down a defect pick list, and punches the enter button. It’s that quick. Capturing and eliminating defects while they are small drives down maintenance costs, eliminates redundant work, and achieves Project Zero™ goals. All the while, the improvement in overall equipment effectiveness increases both production quality and quantity.

Most importantly, industrial facilities now have a tool that delivers safe operating data to field operators exactly when they need the information, ensuring the safest approach to each task is followed.