Rotork: Life Cycle Asset Management is the key to Increased Plant Efficiency

Effective service support is rightly considered as an essential part of production and manufacturing. With regular  servicing and maintenance, production sites can run smoothly and efficiently. Quality service offerings and asset maintenance increase plant efficiency and productivity, reduce ultimate maintenance costs and minimise levels of risk. But is a reliable and safe service offering always given the priority and investment it should?

The biggest challenge of poor maintenance and asset upkeep is the unintended downtime that accompanies product breakdown. This could result in financial loss and even regulatory fines.

Rotork has launched a new Lifetime Management service that changes the way that Rotork Site Services (RSS) operates, with a stronger focus on ensuring the most appropriate response based on the criticality of the customer’s application.

The new approach proves optimal for identifying the unique needs of a customer and providing appropriate support. These are Health Checks, Planned Maintenance, Enhanced Warranty and Predictive Maintenance.

A Health Check is an assessment of actuator asset condition relative to design specification and operational use. Through this, we can help the customer to identify the condition of their current assets and suggest an appropriate maintenance plan moving forward.

The Planned Maintenance encompasses thorough, intrusive product inspections and pro-active repair management. The data logger and configuration will be benchmarked, environmental O-rings and batteries may be replaced (if necessary) and functional tests (manual, remote and local) will be carried out. Additionally, Planned Maintenance provides access to spare parts as part of our obsolescence programme.

Enhanced Warranty provides an extended warranty period and condition-based monitoring. This encompasses at least two Health Checks a year and a review of historic performance, obtained through data logger interrogation.

Predictive Maintenance encompasses everything that the previous tiers provide, with the added provision of identifying potential problems before they are able to manifest. Data logger records are compared through machine learning and the patterns which occur prior to failures are identified. If these patterns are later identified within functioning actuators, we work with customers to proactively implement mitigation plans.

Dave Godfrey, Rotork’s Services & Aftermarkets Product Manager, commented: “Lifetime Management centres around maximising process uptime and asset availability for our customers. The different levels of support on offer allow our customers to mix and match in order to design a truly bespoke level of support to best match their individual site needs. Having Rotork involved in the management of their assets will allow them to keep up to date with product support and service as their installation base matures.”

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