Proactive Maintenance Saving Millions of Dollars

One of the world’s largest exploration and production companies was operating as leanly as possible given the prolonged slump in oil prices. As such, an operational parameter wasn’t effectively monitored and equipment failure went unnoticed in the machines.

SmartSignal from GE Digital detected signs of machine stress on particular equipment. The Rapid Response team in GE’s Industrial Performance & Reliability Center notified the customer of this stress and began briefing the customer during weekly calls. Rather than waiting until a hard alarm was tripped at the customer facility that would have induced reactive maintenance, the IPRC presented the customer with a range of potential root causes, upon which the customer inspected the equipment to determine which of the causes was underlying. During inspection, the customer discovered the cause of machine stress. Rather than waiting months to replace the faulty machine at its scheduled date of replacement, the customer replaced the machine during planned downtime as soon as it detected potential machine failure.

• [Efficiency Improvement - Production Uptime]
  GE IPRC’s early detection of machine problems combined with the customer’s proactive maintenance allowed the customer to avoid tens of millions of dollars’ worth of lost production.