Across Canada as the industry looks for ways for ways to improve efficiency and reduce expenses, tens of thousands of motors are quietly at work, responsible for moving oil and gas from natural deposits to wellhead, through processing and distribution.
While motors work long and hard, they all eventually fail – potentially idling capital assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But many oil and gas operations manage the maintenance of their motors with basic principles that haven’t changed in decades, experts say. These include:
- Oversight by in-house technicians with responsibility for general knowledge on all of a facility’s equipment.
- Maintenance conducted at recommended intervals.
- Limited collection and review of performance data.
- Large capital investment in stand-by inventory to minimize downtime in the case of a motor failure.
This basic approach to motor maintenance may represent an inefficient use of both capital and manpower. “If one wanted to characterize motor performance management as an underdeveloped discipline at most companies, I would say there are reasons for that,” offers Niklas Brodd, General Manager of ABB Motor Performance Management. “As an asset class, motors are very reliable and they don’t require a lot of effort to maintain. It’s easy for a company to look at this and conclude there are other more promising areas for improvement.”
However, Brodd says, that might mean overlooking an opportunity for significant savings. “When you look at major facilities in the industry, they may have well over a thousand motors. Small improvements can make a big difference. If you can cut 20 percent from the cost to maintain all these motors, the savings add up.”
Brodd, who is quick to note that ABB is the world’s largest producer of industrial motors, believes a state-of-the-art program for motor performance management relies on two simple principles:
- Prevent each motor from failing for as long as possible.
- When a failure occurs, have a plan that minimizes both downtime and cost.
To prevent motors from failing, Brodd advocates more sophisticated monitoring and analysis. The standard method of SPM vibration analysis, for example, can be supported by ultrasonic analysis to develop an improved understanding of the motor’s condition. Power supplies also have a major impact on motor life and performance, and therefore require constant monitoring for multiple metrics.
“All of these data are fundamental to a true reliability program. When you pair them with a preventive maintenance plan, you keep motors running better for longer,” Brodd says.
Such knowledge, along with deep understanding of the motor’s lifecycle, also allows the application of predictive maintenance techniques, “enabling you to decide when it’s time to take out a motor proactively – rather than letting it run to failure,” Brodd notes.
This is critical to the second aspect of motor performance management: reducing the cost and duration of downtime. Motor failures can disrupt operations at the worst times – such as when demand is high and it’s critical to operate at capacity. By being able to schedule motor changeouts, companies can avoid such disruption.
“In most plants, this doesn’t happen because people don’t have data to back up their positions,” Brodd says. “They can’t demonstrate when a motor is increasingly likely to fail.”
Another key to managing downtime is working closely with vendors on cost and expected delivery performance when motors or related equipment are needed. It’s an area that Brodd says is often neglected – again due to the reliability of the equipment itself.
“You know motors are going to fail, but it’s always a surprise when they do,” he says. “With all the other things procurement and maintenance functions have to do, it’s easy to overlook the issues that pertain specifically to motors when dealing with suppliers.”
Companies also struggle to maintain state-of-the-art knowledge about motors among technical, Brodd says.
For all of these reasons, companies across a wide range of industries are turning to outsourced solutions such as ABB’s Motor Performance Management service. In such an arrangement, all lifecycle aspects of an operation’s motors are handled by the third-party vendor. The service includes monitoring, maintenance, repair and replacement. It includes management of supplier agreements and operates under established performance requirements. Such programs typically cover all motors in the operation – regardless of the original manufacturer. And in some cases, such as ABB, the cost of the program is paid for exclusively by the savings generated.
The advantages of such a service, Brodd says are that it can:
- Assure up-to-date knowledge is applied to motors across the operation;
- Lengthen the life of motors in service;
- Add predictability to when motors are taken out ofservice;
- Reduce the time and cost of motor replacement;
- Potentially reduce the number – and cost – of motors held in reserve;
- Reduce manpower required to develop and maintain advantageous supplier agreements;
- Reduce overall costs associated with maintaining motors.
Brodd is quick to emphasize that savings through outsourced motor maintenance vary depending on an organization’s size, complexity and the sophistication of its existing motor maintenance. But he said savings sometimes reach 15 percent in the first year and it is not uncommon to reach 20 percent over several years.
Outsourcing motor performance management is a three phase process, Brodd says. With ABB, Phase I is a feasibility study – an audit of all motor operations to estimate the potential savings. If the business case is strong enough, Phase II is partnership development – defining the specifics of the relationship. The third phase is signing of an agreement and commencement of work.
While Brodd believes most oil and gas operations might improve performance and cost structures by outsourcing their motor performance management, he concedes the arrangement may not suit every company.
Some companies simply don’t believe it’s the appropriate use of their time to manage this aspect of their operations, Brodd says. Others have a culture that tends not to make use of outside vendors at such intensive levels. And still others work to maintain direct control over purchases without a third party being involved.
In such cases, Brodd offers this advice for improving in-house motor performance management:
- Increase the sophistication of monitoring for motors and their power supplies, and learn to interpret the data to migrate from scheduled maintenance to some level of predictive maintenance.
- Review relationships with vendors to ensure that service
- Agreements minimize the cost of replacing motors without
- Sacrificing quality or length of lifecycle.
- Encourage specialization and training to develop in-house technical expertise on motors.
