Challenge: For an industrial site to meet its production and profit goals it must operate reliably, and key to this is having utilities like steam, electric, air, and water delivered as needed. Any interruption in utility supply normally results in a quality issue, production slowdown, or total production interruption. In the utility area, reliability is typically driven by two things; individual equipment uptime, and the interaction of various process units when there is an upset or breakdown. Many sites run the majority of their equipment using a combination of preventive and run to failure maintenance strategies. This means that there is usually little or no warning of device or equipment failures that interrupt normal operations. Additional difficulty can occur when a major utility unit such as a boiler experiences an issue. The loss of one producing unit often puts strain on other parts of the system, resulting in a cascade of trips and in a worst case scenario, shutdown of the entire site.
Solution: Higher reliability can be achieved when most impending equipment issues are identified before they cause a production interruption, and if a unit does go down, the loss of that unit is isolated such that it does not bring down things around it. Emerson’s control and information solutions help industrial sites improve reliability by providing full real-time asset health information, bringing predictive intelligence capability to identify equipment issues early, and isolating any process problems when they occur. Emerson’s AMS Suite integrates information from all key assets including mechanical equipment, electrical systems, process equipment, instruments, and valves. With AMS Suite, action such as a planned maintenance shutdown can be taken before equipment fails and severe consequences occur. Emerson’s SmartProcess® strategies make operations easier during upset conditions that do happen. For example, SmartProcess Header assists by immediately and automatically rebalancing the steam system without operator intervention after an upset.
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