There are more reasons now than ever to...


In today’s challenging situation, ABB Motors & Drives Service is fully ready and able to support you and make sure that your drives, motors and generators are professionally maintained, serviced and monitored – even remotely, if needed – thus minimizing your downtime and maximizing productivity. 


People are now discovering that #NewNormal means we don’t truly need some things that we always thought we needed. The pandemic is leading many of us to find new, creative and efficient solutions to keep our lives running rather normally, without all the effort previously thought to be necessary.

This also applies to industry, where distancing and travel restrictions have made managers, engineers and technicians realize that face-to-face meetings aren’t as absolutely required as we thought they were. This offers many important benefits to industrial operations, including cost savings and reduced health and safety risks.

Rest assured

ABB Motors & Drives Service is fully able to support all your needs in the #NewNormal with a growing range of remote services – saving you both time and money. Now you have more reasons than ever to try them.

Stay tuned as we present a series of cases and examples covering the benefits and use of these remote solutions.


Remote, on-line testing of drives and motors at our expert workshops

 

More reasons than ever to… remotely participate in and verify motor and drive testing

 
The #NewNormal is no barrier to allowing ABB’s motors and drives customers to fully participate in remote testing of equipment after maintenance in our workshops.

Today, instead of requiring our customers’ maintenance and technical personnel to physically travel to our professional workshops, we are now successfully using online analysis tools and high-quality video connections to allow customers to witness exactly what is happening during formal mechanical and electrical testing of their motors and drives.

The advantage of this modern remote service is that customers avoid both time and travel expenses – as well as reducing health and safety risks in these times of pandemic. Through high quality communication links between the customer and our expert service engineers, this type of work is now successfully being done remotely on both motors and drives.
Successfully using online analysis tools and high-quality video
Avoiding both time and travel expenses
Reducing health and safety risks

Effectively used in both motors and drives workshops

As an example, for motors service in our workshop in Spain, a system has been developed that clearly and comfortably shows the testing work in progress, and the results achieved, remotely. This means authorized parties can verify the motor disassembly, repair and reassembly operations and observe the final testing from essentially anywhere in the world.

Similarly, for drives testing, our workshop in Brazil has been using remote monitoring to do load tests where the customer fully participates, without traveling to the site. This has been successfully done with numerous customers, saving them time and travel costs.

TO LEARN MORE about our Motors & Generators and Drives remote testing, please check with your ABB representative to see if it can work for you. Stay tuned for the next #NewNormal benefit.


Safety

 

More reasons than ever to… reduce health and safety risks, while respecting #NewNormal distancing, with digital and remote support services

 

In the #NewNormal, the world is travelling and meeting in person much less. This is no problem for ABB’s Motors & Drives Service team, which have a wide range of remote service support and monitoring tools to help you install, commission, maintain and monitor motors and drives from far away – keeping people safe.

Your equipment may be located in hazardous environments, such as chemical, petrochemical or metals plants. Or it may be in remote places that can be difficult to access. Even in relatively safe settings, any time a maintenance person goes in to do on-site work in a plant, there are risks for injuries. Statistically, despite all the measures in place to protect them, the more frequently maintenance people do such on-site work, the higher the risk for accidents.

Even before the #NewNormal arrived and drastically reduced both travel and face-to-face meetings, ABB was offering digital services that allowed you to monitor and maintain your powertrains from a safe distance. Recently this range has been greatly expanded to cover even more remote service tasks that previously needed to be done via traditional on-site visits. Therefore, #NewNormal is giving you more reasons than ever to adopt these powerful remote services and tools.

An example comes from Switzerland, where the country’s leading power semiconductor plant is using ABB Smart Sensors to continuously monitor all the key motors on HVAC fans – to assure an ultra-clean and dust-free environment with precise temperature and humidity control. Most of the fans are housed in self-contained air handling units (AHUs) or cooling towers, making direct access impossible without shutting down the AHU. Being able to monitor the fans’ condition remotely helps avoid operational surprises, and also allows better scheduling of maintenance work.

We have dozens of other examples where ABB’s remote monitoring has been used successfully. The result is improved health and safety protection, reduced dangers to both your personnel and your company, and lower costs. That’s good news for everybody.

 
Improved HSE protection
Reduced dangers
Lower costs

Make your industrial powertrain operations safer with ABB Motors & Drives remote service support and ABB Ability™ remote monitoring. To learn more about our customer’s success click here, and stay tuned for the next #NewNormal benefit.



Remote diagnosis and commissioning

 

More reasons than ever to… use remote monitoring and support

 
In today’s #NewNormal, modern technology allows remote service engineers to get early warnings about the potential failure of critical motors and drives in your processes. Even though ABB’s experts might not be able to be physically present at your site, we can remotely guide you to quickly find and solve most problems*.

ABB Motors & Drives’ spectrum of remote service support and ABB Ability™ remote monitoring solutions allows you to access our many years of accumulated expertise to proactively detect possible failures in your equipment and then rapidly solve them. Without actually being on-site we can often remotely solve a wide range of challenges to swiftly get your operations up and running – for many years of smooth and profitable production.

In fact, in today’s #NewNormal we are better equipped than ever to support customers using remote insight tools that can be implemented from afar – across town or across the world. In recent years we have been successfully introducing our ABB Ability™ solutions that monitor and maintain drives and motors from a distance. Now with distancing being required and travel restricted, our remote support services are perfectly positioned to quickly solve issues in our customers’ industrial processes.
Years of accumulated expertise
Rapid failure resolution
Better equipped than ever to support customers

Remote diagnosis and fast replacement helps avoid costly problems

A petrochemical plant in China that uses our ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring presents a good example of how our remote services help to find and quickly resolve problems that could otherwise be very costly. In early 2020, when travel was severely restricted in China, an ABB support line engineer working at home identified a variable speed drive that had experienced a failure in the plant. The drive is used to mix petrochemicals, and if stopped for too long the materials will solidify and can result in costs of USD 150,000 or more in wasted product, cleaning and downtime. 

Thankfully, the ABB engineer spotted the fault early via ABB Ability™ remote monitoring. He immediately contacted the plant and created a group of ABB experts to resolve it remotely. Within an hour, working closely with the customer’s on-site technician, the exact problem in the external trip loop was identified. The customer was able to use their spares to replace the faulty parts and repair the external trip loop properly with our remote assistance and monitoring. Thanks to the condition monitoring, and also close remote service support between ABB and the customer’s engineers on site, no major production losses occurred, which the customer highly appreciated. 

To learn more about how you can benefit from remote services like these, and why there are more reasons than ever to adopt these modern solutions in today’s #New Normal, click here now. And stay tuned for the next #NewNormal benefit, which we will be publishing soon. 

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* Remote commissioning of motors and drives is possible in many situations. If interested, check with your ABB representative to see if it can work for you.


Avoid Downtime

 

More reasons than ever to… get early warning, and avoid expensive unplanned downtime

 
Lost time never comes back, making it very costly. To avoid surprises, ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring lets you see problems in motors, drives, bearings and pumps long before they cause an expensive breakdown. Even before the #NewNormal situation developed, ABB had been offering ways to monitor real-time health and performance of industrial powertrains from a distance. Now there are more reasons than ever for you to adopt them.

ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring for motors and drives lets you analyze real-time KPI data about a powertrain’s reliability, usage patterns, vibrations, temperature, power consumption, stress levels and other parameters. These are immediately updated and accessible for any time period you define, letting you monitor them using either the ABB Ability™ Powertrain portal or your own monitoring system via a cloud interface.

This remote analysis can be used in a wide variety of situations, and if serious problems occur ABB experts can remotely look at essential motor and drive data to run fast diagnostics. In many cases, travel to the site for problem identification and resolution is not necessary – even when ABB’s expert assistance is needed. Now issues can be rapidly diagnosed and guidance to fix them even remotely, saving our customers time and money.
Analyze real-time KPI data
Remotely look at essential motor and drive data to run fast diagnostics
Saving our customers time and money

Absolut Vodka gets immediate benefits with Smart Sensors

A good example of the valuable benefits that remote condition monitoring delivers comes from Absolut Vodka, Sweden’s iconic spirits producer. After researching various ways to benefit from condition-based maintenance, the technical team at Absolut decided to install what they considered the most cost-effective and easy-to-use solution: ABB AbilityTM Smart Sensors.

The Smart Sensors, which are each about the size of a smartphone, were installed on several motors in the ‘mash preparation’ process – a continuous function that is critical to the overall distillery operations. Immediately after the sensors were fitted on the motor housings, an abnormal vibration curve was detected on an agitator motor. This indicated a possible bearing failure, which was confirmed by further analysis. By detecting the defective bearing before it failed, Absolut could fix the problem during a planned shutdown and avoid the lost productivity and costs caused by unexpected downtime.

Remarkably, around the same time, the sensors uncovered a second possible problem – large vibrations in a major pump feeding the mash line. At first, engineers thought it might also be a bearing issue. But it turned out to be a valve that had shifted accidentally, resulting in pump cavitation and vibration. This problem was then easily repaired.

Absolut’s Automation Engineer, Tony Knutsson is clearly pleased with the Smart Sensors and the benefits: “The sensors gave us an easy way to gain a deeper insight into our mash preparation, with the possibility to find even small issues and fix them – before they became major problems. By getting deeper understanding of the condition of our equipment, we now can better plan maintenance activities and align our tasks with planned production stops.”

To learn more about this story, click here.

To learn more about using ABB Ability™ to remotely monitor your powertrains and other process equipment, please click here and stay tuned for the next #NewNormal benefit.

 

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* Remote commissioning of motors and drives is possible in many situations. If interested, check with your ABB representative to see if it can work for you.

Remote commissioning of motors and drives

 

More reasons than ever to… consider remote commissioning for motors or drives

 
In many cases, remote commissioning of motors and drives is possible*. Using modern digital methods for communicating and analyzing, remote commissioning can give big savings in money and travel time.

The skills required to commission and troubleshoot excitation control panels for high-voltage synchronous motors, generators and condensers are both rare and in high demand. Similarly, special skills and experience are often needed for commissioning variable speed drives. However, with many travel restrictions in place today due to the pandemic, ABB’s experts that do such work are not always allowed to travel to the places they are needed.

Situations and challenges like these are quite common in the #NewNormal. But this certainly does not mean ABB’s capability to service and support our customers is in any way reduced. In fact, using creative combinations of tools and teamwork, ABB is fully able to support most of our motors and drives customers remotely.*
Using local competence
Global expertise
Strong teamwork

High-voltage synchronous motors start with remote expert support


A good example of remote support for commissioning motors comes from the Middle East. A commissioning engineer from ABB in Sweden was supposed to travel to a drilling site earlier this year to start the commissioning of four excitation control panels for high-voltage synchronous motors. However, due to travel restrictions, this was not possible.

Instead, using local competence, global expertise, and strong teamwork, the ABB service units in Sweden and the Middle East were able to overcome these challenges to accomplish timely commissioning of the project. Remote support provided by a certified commissioning engineer in Sweden, via telephone and on-line communication, to a field service engineer in the Middle East proved to be a workable solution. This is a good case that shows how such work can be successfully done on a large scale, saving time and travel costs for both ABB and our customers.

Drives commissioning done with cameras to support customer’s technicians


On a project in the utilities sector, also located in the Middle East, ABB engineers could not travel to do medium-voltage drives commissioning. So remote drive commissioning was done using two customer technicians on-site to support physical activities.

Two cameras were set up to observe the work area and the drives. The customer provided a PC where ABB installed its software for commissioning and shared control via Microsoft teams. The process went very smoothly since the job was well prepared and all parties knew the exact steps, requirements and safety precautions. All went well and the customer was extremely happy, since ABB managed to shorten the commissioning time and bring the equipment online before the set deadline.

TO LEARN MORE about our remote service support for Motors & Generators and Drives, please check with your ABB representative to see how it can work for you. Stay tuned for the next #NewNormal benefit.

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*Remote commissioning of motors and drives is possible in many situations. If interested, check with your ABB representative to see if it can work for you.

Backup Parameters Safely, Easily

 

More reasons than ever to… protect your drive data and operations from anywhere

 
For industrial operations in the #NewNormal world, there are more reasons than ever to use ABB Ability™ to remotely back up your drive data. It’s a safe, easy security measure to protect your drives and your business. 

Your drive parameters are critical to maintaining the smooth and profitable operation of your plants. But when many drives are spread over large production sites, or across multiple remote locations, safely backing up all these parameters can be a logistical nightmare.

In today’s #NewNormal, where travel is greatly reduced and on-site access discouraged, you now have more reasons than ever to use ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring to automate your drives parameter backup process. Every 24 hours, all drive parameters can be safely and automatically backed-up in a central database operated by ABB Ability™.

Additionally, the service includes protection against potential misuse and accidental parameter changes. This means you are automatically informed if any drive parameters are changed – whether this is a normal result of operations or due to an operator error.
Automate your drives parameter backup process
Protection against potential misuse and accidental parameter changes
Get automatically informed if any drive parameters are changed
Therefore, as a maintenance manager or technician, if anything unintentional or erroneous should occur, you will know it and quickly be able to restore the drive to its previous state to restart your operations. 

In the #NewNormal world, protecting your drives, processes and production with safe, automatic drive data and parameter backup from any location has never been easier. Make sure you don’t overlook it.

TO LEARN MORE about using ABB Ability™ to backup drives, click here, and stay tuned for the next #NewNormal benefit.

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