Intelligent reliability with Life Cycle Services

Published: 25th September 2009 | Issue 5

Metso Automation recently celebrated the opening of new service centres in Brazil and Russia, and another is currently being established in China. New service managers and service personnel have been recruited. These are just some of the actions being taken by Metso Automation to strengthen their local presence in order to provide even better customer services.

By being close to their customers they can offer services that meet their real needs. Their local sales and service people are the channel through which their customers can benefit from the technology and expertise of the whole Metso Automation organisation.

In many cases, the new service centres have been created to give comprehensive support to those customers who have signed a Customer Advantage Agreement with Metso Automation. The contents of this agreement can range from on-site services to inventory management services whereby Metso Automation takes care of customers’ field equipment inventories. However all Life Cycle Services offered by Metso Automation, whatever their scope, are always individually tailored to meet the customer’s specific situation and needs.

Full scope of Life Cycle Services

To simplify the lives of customers in their daily on-site operations, Metso Automation provides a wide range of life cycle services, which offer the following advantages:

A reduction in the cost of ownership by providing a reduced, yet up-to-date, inventory which more accurately corresponds to the installation needs;

Lower maintenance costs and the avoidance of unplanned shutdowns, thanks to predictive maintenance based on diagnostics;

Smooth commissioning, start-up and shutdown because they use qualified, safety and ATEX-trained service technicians during the critical phases of the plant’s life, to ensure fast ramp-up to production;

Professional repair and maintenance services carried out by either Metso Automation’s Service Centres or by authorised subcontractors;

The provision of genuine, high-quality spare parts and a warranty on repaired products;

High quality training that is tailored to the customer’s needs to improve the skills of the customer’s operators and technicians.

Get rid of your excess stock

Example of inventory value development:

Typical situation in a process plant

In many cases, keeping records of the installed base up to date is a challenge. For example, information in the maintenance system may be corrupted or the condition of the field devices may not be known. As a result, the ordering of spare parts or replacement products is time-consuming and the maintenance actions are based on guess work rather than the diagnosed condition of field equipment. For these reasons, inventory levels may be high when the data in the systems is not up to date.

Optimized inventories to match the needs of the installed base

Providing an inventory management service is an answer to these challenges. Metso Automation’s specialists help the customer to analyse the installed base, either by a physical installed base audit or by evaluation based on the inventory lists. At present they have about 50 Inventory Management Agreements globally, covering an installed base of over 50 000 TAGs. Interest in this service is increasing, and new agreements are under negotiation. Many of Metso’s global customers are promoting this service within their own organizations, after seeing the good results that are achieved with active inventory management.

You can reduce your inventory value by up to 90% within 5 years

The objective of the inventory management service is to match inventory content precisely to the needs of the installed field equipment. This means that the equipment in the inventory is always up-to-date and available for use. The current inventory is compared to optimal inventory content and a plan is devised to reduce or modify the inventory content to its optimal level over a period. Typically, this takes about 5 years to achieve, but the inventory reduction can be as high as 90% of the original value. The agreed, optimized inventory is owned and managed by Metso Automation, who also take care of the old inventory usage and manage the inventory towards a contractual stock owned by Metso Automation.

Metso state that it has been possible to achieve such outstanding results from their Inventory Management services by fine-tuning the service together with their customers over a number of years. Their local service centre always carries out the service, which means that the customer’s installed base is very well understood. The required equipment is stored as components and assembled on the basis of need, which keeps the inventory value low.

Reliability and availability via
on-line condition monitoring and diagnostics

For monitoring the condition of installed field equipment Metso Automation has developed a service whereby a specialist analyses the data collected by Neles FieldCare and reports back to the customer. This monitoring is carried out on-line in the customer’s network, either locally or by using a remote connection.

The aim of the service is to integrate condition monitoring as a daily tool and as a basis for predictive maintenance. Once condition monitoring has become a part of the daily routine for the customer, the content of the condition monitoring support service can be tailored according to customer needs. The customer gets the best results in cases where both Inventory management and on-line condition monitoring are included in the Customer Advantage Agreement supported by the local Metso Automation Service centre.

Metso, Tel: 0870 606 1478

Valmet UK Ltd