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Maintaining a competitive advantage

Maintenance and repairs are key aspects of asset management. An effective maintenance program is crucial to mitigate the risk of equipment failure and prevent costly disruptions to production and other serious consequences.

Infrequent or inadequate maintenance is a leading cause of poor equipment performance, leading to unexpected downtime, asset damage and harm to operators or community health and safety.

Asset failure can easily result in domino effects and cascading costs that far exceed asset value. Regulatory penalties, safety risks, productivity loss, legal liability, reputational damage and other indirect consequences have significant long-term impacts on the bottom line.

Maintenance and repairs become increasingly important as the installed asset base ages and equipment components begin to wear out. Proper preventative maintenance is integral to extending asset lifespan and deferring replacement costs.

With increased focus and pressure on energy costs, companies are putting their electrical power distribution assets under closer scrutiny. With this in mind, forward-thinking organizations are focussing on intelligent, preventive service and support.

The highest levels of equipment reliability, efficiency and safety can be achieved through an advanced program of preventative maintenance, developed and undertaken in partnership with suitably experienced and skilled service professionals.

Rather than seeing service as reactive intervention, companies are recognizing the importance of investing in regular maintenance to extend the life cycle and productivity of electrical assets, and avoid the environmental impact of buying new equipment.

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What is predictive maintenance?

Predictive maintenance is an advanced preventative strategy where proactive maintenance is scheduled based on asset condition rather than a fixed time-based schedule. Depending on a company’s digital capabilities, there are a number of options to gain an accurate understanding of the current condition and future maintenance requirements of assets.

Data can be gathered via tests measuring relevant condition indicators, or tracked in real-time through condition-monitoring smart technologies. For optimum reliability and return on OpEx, maintenance actions should be prioritized based on condition and risk profile of each asset – i.e. how soon itis likely to fail and the consequences if it does.

Therefore, access to expertly trained service partner technicians who can quickly, effectively, and safely perform repairs is crucial to minimize downtime and reduce OpEx costs long term. The availability of spare parts and other materials for planned or unplanned repairs also affects how rapidly problems can be addressed, with significant implications for uptime and asset ROI.

Repairs are a key component of maintenance, completed as part of regular preventive routines or in response to unexpected breakdowns and outages. Although effective preventive maintenance should greatly reduce the likelihood of critical equipment failure, the potential for unexpected events necessitating high-risk emergency repairs can never be entirely eliminated.

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Planned maintenance assures productivity for LNG plant

Collaborative planning was the key to success on a massive electrical maintenance shutdown of the INPEX LNG Ichthys floating offshore facilities in the Timor Sea.

When you’re operating one of the world’s largest offshore LNG plants, planned maintenance is key to meet production schedules and ensure greatest ROI. The project, off the north coast of Western Australia, integrates subsea extraction, a massive offshore central processing facility connected to a 59-metre wide floating production storage and offloading vessel, and an 890-kilometer pipeline to onshore processing in Darwin. Between scheduled shutdowns, it needs to work 24/7.

“Our core crew gave really good feedback on ABB’s knowledge and performance, and said it gave them a great deal of confidence when they were reenergizing the equipment.”

Jason Hicks, INPEX Shutdown Coordinator, Ichthys LNG Project

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Planning for the shutdown began in 2021 and despite COVID restrictions was conducted smoothly in mid-2022. ABB’s team performed 5,200 hours on-site, running 12-hour shifts, with zero incidents.

ABB Electrification Service was the chosen partner on the first major inspection and testing of the systems that form the electrical backbone of the extraction and offshore processing facility. The project, involving switchboard inspections, circuit board maintenance and relay testing, was set to take 30+ days and required the full focus of contractors, personnel and equipment suppliers. Planning in collaboration with reliable partners was crucial to completing necessary works within an agreed timeframe. All necessary equipment and tooling left for Darwin a month before the planned shutdown and was shipped to the floating facility ahead of the crew’s arrival by helicopter.

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Predictive maintenance for minimum downtime

ABB Electrification Service offers a comprehensive care portfolio including maintenance, repair and technical support spanning the entire lifecycle of electrical equipment, maximizing electrical supply for improved productivity and profitability.

ABB can formulate condition-based predictive maintenance strategies by analyzing data such as asset condition, importance of the equipment and product lifecycle status alongside that from digital condition-monitoring and diagnostic systems, to identify and manage problems in the electrical system before they occur.

Once collected, data can be analyzed and priorities are weighted using intelligent algorithms to evaluate the risks and consequences of failure. The Condition Index is based on reliability principles in current ISO and IEEE standards. A comprehensive report provides a clear, thorough and up-to-date understanding of the condition and risk profiles of electrical assets, networks and their individual components, along with a detailed risk-mitigation plan. The report identifies opportunities to improve safety, performance and efficiency, determines budget-allocation priorities and recommends the most beneficial actions. In many cases, ABB’s expert service technicians can perform minor preventive maintenance actions while undertaking assessments.

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Augmented reality advancing operational performance and total cost of ownership

Augmented Reality (AR) is gathering momentum in the world of equipment servicing and is fast becoming the new norm, impacting the way in which shopfloor operatives, service technicians and engineers interact.

With the impacts of energy pricing and security, the priority for industry is resilience and operators need to build an infrastructure that is resilient to all geopolitical changes and be willing to adopt and integrate new technologies, such as AR.

Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), which replaces physical reality with a computer-generated environment, AR superimposes digital information on the physical world. Through AR technology, operational information is presented in a completely new way – augmented in a person’s view of their real environment and acting as a digital assistant. But crucially, AR makes digital assistance interactive, more practical to absorb, as well as easier to understand and act upon. In other words, its core capabilities are visualize, instruct and interact.

ABB pioneered two solutions to provide remote support using immersive extended reality:

1. CLOSER

(Collaborative Operations for Electrical Systems)

Enables interactive troubleshooting using step-by-step tutorials, which can be accessed by customers 24/7 for quick and easy guidance through the different steps of key procedures.

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2. RAISE

(Remote Assistance for Electrical Systems)

Takes this a step further by facilitating remotely guided repairs and replacement of critical components. In addition to using live on-screen annotations and digital overlays in the engineer’s field of vision, it also allows images to be taken, as well as including an audio and video sharing capability and offering guidance via live text chat.

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The tangible improvement to resolution speed with these solutions is vital to minimizing potentially highly disruptive and costly downtime.

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Reaping rewards from putting AR into practice

Seeing is believing, of course, and some recent outcomes show the true value of AR. Together with ABB service experts, the field service engineers of a leading pulp and paper producer use ABB's AR technology for repair strategies and guidance documentation.

This means that maintenance issues that would normally result in days of downtime for travel, troubleshooting and resolution are instead resolved in hours.

Additionally, one of the world’s largest marine shipping operators needed remote maintenance to support problem-solving for its global fleet and reduce the impact of issues while at sea. Service support delivered through AR greatly extended the ability of onboard technicians to address failures they would have otherwise lacked the experience to diagnose and address.

ABB’s experts could identify issues from thousands of miles away and provide their maintenance crews with instructions to solve problems, thereby eliminating the need for re-routes, port stops and all the associated costs.

Such AR technology is not only enabling quicker solutions to improve business continuity, it is also reducing the need for on-site visits for repairs and maintenance, minimizing costs and significantly cutting carbon emissions by as much as 60 percent.