Improved asset reliability for Asian renewable energy producer

The target for the renewable power company was set at cutting the OPEX budget across the company with US$ 40 million. Management recognized that improved long-term asset management should play an important role in reaching that target. After all, renewables are an important energy source for the future and geothermal energy is ready to be harvested for many generations to come. They wanted to create and deploy a long-term reliability and maintenance strategy that consisted of a healthy mix of reactive and proactive maintenance with focus on condition-based maintenance tasks. With a limited budget, it was essential to be able to prioritize asset management so critical assets were maintained properly to avoid unnecessary downtime.

Stage 1: FMECA and data baseline
As always, we started out with reviewing the current setup based on the documentation, data and procedures. We performed a Failure Mode Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) for the equipment of four facilities as the other six facilities were already analyzed by the company to review key challenges and differences between the plants and distinguish all assets into separate risk categories.

Stage 2:PM/ PdM Program
Based on the FMECA validation workshops and based on MaxGrip’s best practices we developed the Preventive Maintenance and Predictive Maintenance (PM/PdM) Program. The consultants developed a failure mechanism reference library. Critical equipment with a high or significant risk to the performance and productivity of the plants received the most robust PM/ PdM package identifying failures before they arise. Assets with a medium risk’s measures were focused on the common predictable or age-related failures. Additionally, low risk assets would default to a minimum care package. In total 40,000 tags were in-scope which were covered by 2,804 task instructions.

For all of these maintenance tasks, MaxGrip provided detailed, long-text work instructions, aligned to the detailed component and failure mechanism. This detailed way of working was possible due to MaxGrip’s long track record and practice leadership. Focus was on non-invasive maintenance tasks to promote a proactive maintenance approach and take the first step in Digital Transformation, online asset condition monitoring and predictive maintenance.

We validated the maintenance strategy and packages with relevant stakeholders and facility maintenance teams.

Stage 3: deployment preparation
With the new strategy in mind, we created a practical spare parts management strategy with a focus on spares for assets which are production-critical and cost-savings on non-essential equipments by stocking spares minimally or not at all.

In this final stage of the project we also prepared the risk-based maintenance strategy for upload to the CMMS system. In that way, the IT provider could easily deploy the templates and operationalize the new fleet-wide maintenance plan.

This energy company significantly improved their asset reliability and increased energy output of the facilities. The new maintenance plan improved the maintenance and asset management efficiency. This was given an extra boost by applying the longread, detailed maintenance task descriptions.

The standardized approach to work orders improved the efficiency of the planners and promoted a unified way of working for the field technicians. An extra benefit of the detailed descriptions is that the process and approach is safeguarded in the way of working. This is an important aspect with an aging workforce that will be followed up by the next generation workforce who need to build up knowledge and expertise.