When the customer was facing critical production downtime, they turned to their trusted partner, Duvivier Dexis for help. This family-run business, specializing in industrial solutions, suggested using ABB Ability™ Monitoring Service to track the condition and performance of their most critical electrically-powered assets consisting of four drying drums and three fans.
The monitoring data showed that one of the three fans driven by 30 kW electric motors responsible for transporting sugar was operating with high vibration levels. An on-site investigation revealed that sugar particles had built up on the fan blades, causing an imbalance. A quick clean-up of the fan blades and replacement of the radial fan filters resulted in increased uptime and also achieved a surprising 12 percent energy saving and a EUR 4,000 yearly savings per fan. With this simple cleaning operation, the customer was able to make a big impact in reducing unnecessary costs by acting on the data insights coming from the condition monitoring system.
Duvivier Dexis also found that the optimal cleaning interval for the fans was once a year, allowing the plant to optimize its maintenance cycles based on the assets' condition. This data insight, delivered through ABB Ability™ Monitoring Service, gives the plant operators weekly reports on the status of their assets and the ability to transition from preventive to predictive maintenance, reducing costs and improving asset availability.
"Our aim is to deliver added value to our clients, and the management of the sugar plant was very pleased with our insights and ABB-certified expertise", said Anthony Dayer, Sales Manager at Duvivier Dexis. "Duvivier Dexis is a crucial partner for us in the digital solutions area, and they use their expertise to provide individualized solutions for their customers", added Olle Henkens, Digital Product Manager at ABB Belgium.
With ABB’s monitoring service, the experts support the plant by analyzing and interpreting the data for them. This enables them to advance from preventive maintenance to predictive maintenance based on the condition of the assets. Preventive maintenance often involves unnecessary operations that are done ‘just in case’, so the transition to targeted, condition-based maintenance reduces costs. It also improves asset availability by minimizing unplanned production stops.
