Data available in manufacturing and production facilities is growing faster than people can process. In a Process Industry Informer article, How Valve Condition Monitoring Reduces Plant Downtime, Emerson’s Fabrice Hoenig highlights this challenge:
The vast amount of data that is generated about equipment condition and performance offers a great opportunity to engineers, but it can be overwhelming to collect and analyse, especially in a time of decreasing workforces and expertise.
Fabrice notes the improvement opportunity:
…ARC Advisory Group estimates that around $20bn, or 5% of annual production, is lost as a result of this downtime every year… around 80% of those losses are preventable.
Given this opportunity, effectively distilling and analyzing this wealth of data can drive business performance improvements. He explains that valves:
…are a critical final control component for any flow-based process and play a key role in overall availability and variability. This makes valves an essential asset requiring inclusion in any predictive maintenance-enabling condition monitoring solution.
While collecting the condition-based data is important, having experts analyze and provide actionable recommendations is what drives improvements. This expertise is often lacking on site or within the company’s organization.
Expertise and technology, delivered by an expert service provider can help close the consumption gap between the functionality that is available, and the functionality that is actually utilised.
Fabrice shares benefits in implementing valve condition monitoring. One example includes the
…insights generated from monitoring supports more efficient shutdowns, turnarounds or outages (STOs), which can amplify savings. For example, it costs about $5,000 on average to pull a valve, yet in an STO where valves are maintained to a schedule rather than using data-driven decisions, around 30% of the pulled valves are found to not need repairs.
Read the article for more on the value in identifying issues earlier, how valve condition monitoring works, and how to implement an effective valve condition monitoring solution.
Learn more about the real-time, non-intrusive Valve Condition Monitoring technology and expertise solution on Emerson.com. You can also connect and interact with other valve experts in the Valves, Regulators & Actuators group in the Emerson Exchange 365 community.
