MAINTENANCE
Now we’re talking Vector Maintenance Management: Balancing processes, optimizing maintenance strategies, killing bottlenecks, improving employee competence are some of the things that Vector Maintenance Management can do for you. Let’s draw an example A company applies a run-hour based strategy for maintaining the power generation sets on a normally unmanned offshore installation. The existing strategy has been in place for many years and requires maintenance to be performed every 1500 hours (approximately every 2 months) on one of the diesel engines. Each 1500 hours the service on the diesel engine consists of renewing the lube-oil and air-, oil- and fuel filters. During normal operations Duty-/Stand-by operation can be switched from one generator set to the other. At 4500 hours a major service task is executed. These run-hour services have been performed for many years.
The challenge is to ensure reliability and availability of both generator sets against optimum cost. Vector Maintenance Management studied the above case and analysed the preventive- and corrective maintenance data over the past 5 years (work order data, oil sampling results et-cetera). From these analyses the conclusion could be drawn that it was possible to perform the lube-oil and filter changes every 2250 hours instead of every 1500 hours. This means that the visit interval of the unmanned installation could be stretched from every 2 months to every 3 months. The new visit regime, however, becomes a bit more critical, since we are getting closer to the limits of durability of lube-oil and filters. The reliability and availability of the power generation system is of the utmost importance to safeguard safety and production. For this reason Vector
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recommended a 3 monthly visit regime, but instead of performing maintenance on one set, both sets are maintained during the same visit. Bottom line we spend a little more direct maintenance cost on power generation sets. However, the major savings are achieved via a reduction in the number of helicopter flights per year (1/3 reduction of logistic costs)! The above example proves that it is not always necessary to reduce maintenance cost, but more importantly to have a proper overview of the entire ‘chain of events’ in order to have a clear understanding in where to spend money in order to save money. If you think that, after reading this article ‘This article was all about my company’, it is time to contact a hybrid-consultant with technical and economical expertise. Eager to help you adding value to your business for today and tomorrow.
13-10-14 11:54