The problem

A large chemical plant within the UK was experiencing frequent failures on critical assets in key areas of their site, resulting in a significant loss of production. The majority of their maintenance teams’ time was spent reacting to failures as they happened, with little planned maintenance. This led to the same assets being repaired urgently, multiple times in a short period. This resulted in a significant amount of downtime on the same bad actors, with little notice.  An urgent condition monitoring solution was required that suited this site and their team.

Solution

Following discussion between AVT Reliability® and the Engineering Manager, AVT Reliability® were informed that some of the maintenance team had past experience in asset management and were familiar with some condition monitoring techniques, such as vibration analysis. It was agreed the best option for the chemical plant was to partner with the AVT Reliability® Remote Diagnostic Centre (RDC) for the first year.

This consisted of the maintenance engineers taking regular readings using both Machine Sentry® Mobile and Machine Sentry® Fixed Sensors on the appropriate assets. The data collected was then remotely analysed by the RDC team who reported on suitable actions and gave recommendations for the site engineers to complete. AVT Reliability® experts also attended site every quarter to provide additional help, which included checking of alarms and setting up vibration points.

Implementing Machine Sentry® allowed other asset information such as oil analysis and visual inspections to be inputted and kept in one place, enabling the client and AVT Reliability® to see a complete view of asset health from all aspects.

Within the Machine Sentry® Portal, ADA™ the Automated Diagnostic Assistant highlighted any potential faults, and the additional expert support from AVT Reliability® gave recommendations for the site engineers to complete, taking into account the findings of ADA™. This enabled the engineers to support. Overall this has helped to reduce the number of hours the chemical manufacturer has spent repairing assets, increased production time and improved overall asset health.

Approximately 80% of actions in the system are now proactive, predictive or time based.

Savings

AVT Reliability® have found on average, 7% of standard or critical assets are likely to fail in the chemical industry throughout a year. The below table shows the savings, based on 40 failures throughout the year, for this chemical manufacturer alone.