Engineering and Maintenance participate strongly in continuous process operations. They determine process control parameters; act decisively in production events; solve complex problems; and design modifications in production processes and hardware aimed at achieving productive, economic and environmental goals. On the other hand, Operations teams possess pragmatic knowledge of operational procedures, of hardware responses to process control commands, and of changes in production processes such as equipment failures or new production parameters. Their knowledge must therefore influence Engineering and Maintenance teams. However, there is no theoretical framework to support organizational design that brings together the three functions through interfaces. This paper therefore aims to fill that gap.
Organizational design; Job organization; Continuous process production; Engineering; Production and maintenance integration; Sociotechnical systems
