Up Time Magazine - December 2008/January 2009 - (Page 15) Asset Performance Management Leads to Major Improvements for Gas Field Operator A midstream company in the natural gas business has a large gathering network throughout the Southwest. Operating in the U.S., Canada and Europe, the natural gas wholesaler deals in trading, marketing, transmission processing and distribution of both natural gas and electricity. An extremely competitive market and high-volume demand have forced midstream companies to push their transmission and gathering systems to full capacity. Pushing aging systems to maximum production causes a rise in system breakdowns and compressor failures. Balancing maximum production with minimum machine failure is essential to optimizing asset performance. In other words, this company needed to get as much total running time out of its field equipment and reduce the mean time between failure or scheduled maintenance. The user knew that these two objectives – utilization and optimization – are functional opposites, and they require new methods to determine the ideal mix for operations. They needed a system that combined both of these functions to provide real-time asset performance management. Previously, maintenance management was just scheduling emergency repair with periodic service. In addition, the operations group was reacting to machine failure as it happened, without regard for planned production schedules. Operations needed to find a way to manage its assets for the greatest uptime to produce gas more efficiently and to minimize equipment failure and subsequent costs. Process Optimization They had the data, but it was difficult to correlate across their many systems in the field. A system that would integrate all the different inputs to actually analyze and generate actionable results was a critical need. The challenge was to determine preventable downtime leading to lost opportunity from pipeline production. They also needed to estimate the production time they could recover from this improved use of the data. THE SOLUTION An Enterprise Control System (ECS) provide a number of benefits to this customer. Perhaps the most important element that yields real asset performance benefits is the use of real-time process data. Dynamic Performance Indicators were generated by taking inputs from a variety of real-time measurements from plant floor devices. A key element to the solution for this company is the ability of the Invensis InFusion ECS to model typical machine behavior through all operating conditions and generate alerts that identify the deviation of failing components from normal operation. An incident alarm, based on multiple sensor condition rules, defines the machine condition and provides diagnostics for failure mode analysis. Sensor alert tolerances inciAsset Performance dent and alarm rules are defined Management by the user. UTILIZATION As se t o Ec no m i a cV lu e Asset Maintenance and Operations manManagement agers could utilize risk manageAVAILABILITY ment tools to determine how to Asset Performance Management Balances Utilization and Availability act, if machine health and the time to failure could be estimated. This key information would allow mainimprovements: tenance and operation managers to answer key questions such as: “Can the machine make it to the next scheduled PM?” and 1. Real-time process control data brought in critical “Can I meet my production schedule with the machine in this measurements condition?” Process operators could then manage their process and determine how to act to minimize losses and optimize eco2. Multiple protocols and multiple devices were easily confignomic benefits. ured by the InFusion™ Distributed Control System layer using The company was doing all it could to manage the inputs from the sensors and to subsequently make educated decisions based on its process knowledge. However, the InFusion ECS allowed the user to take the real-time control information and push it through. Ultimately, the InFusion ECS functioned in a truly collaborative method, with these major Another customer challenge came from the shear competitiveness of the market. Gas gathering and delivery is a commodity market, requiring maximum throughput at maximum asset utilization and absolute low cost. Any technology upgrade must have a measurable and sustainable Return on Investment. A limited staff to maximize profits has also strained the maintenance organization, which further complicated production efforts. The customer had invested in data systems that are useful for condition monitoring, but had not closed the loop from data to diagnostics to maintenance planning to operations forecasting. the InFusion™ Engineering Environment 3. Real time process measurements were fed into Avantis software, Invensys’ asset intelligence system, to predict critical and non-critical failures 4. Dynamic Performance Measures were generated from a ‘Watch List’ which created an Asset Optimization result 5. Corrective maintenance activities were acted upon based on a financial impact basis 6. Work orders were automatically delivered to Maintenance engineers www.uptimemagazine.com 15 http://www.uptimemagazine.com
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