Compliance
Perhaps the most important of the dimensions is compliance. The need to monitor emissions was borne out of regulatory guidance to accurately measure and report emissions so that they can be controlled. Regulations are set to help protect the health of the natural world and have become tighter as new evidence comes to the fore. Non-compliance with regulations has never been more expensive nor important than it is today, in terms of both fines and the threat of possible facility shutdown(s). Simply fulfilling the demands of increased regulations results in an increase in compliance costs.
Asset availability
Failure of a single part of an analyzer can cause cascaded damage within the entire system. End users are required to ensure maximum uptime of the analyzers through regular monitoring of key parameters. Sometimes a team of maintenance technicians will need to work together gathering the information from different sources to provide a holistic view of the system. This added layer of complexity makes the monitoring process difficult.
Asset quality and accuracy
Emissions monitoring regulations emphasize keeping the asset quality high. The conventional method of maintaining asset quality is through preventive maintenance methodology. Preventive maintenance is driven by a calendar, parts are replaced based on statistically determined lifetime averages; this means that troubleshooting is delayed until the actual condition of the analyzer becomes known. And as a result, the quality of the analyzer is diminished; ultimately affecting the measurement accuracy of different components.
Using data to predict asset health through the detailed analysis of asset performance benchmarked against similar analyzers all over the world, is the future. It will support asset health and accuracy and ensure parts are replaced when required, rather than a statistically determined average lifetime.
Resource availability
Employee retirements and departures erode the “institutional knowledge” available to companies. Staff fluctuations challenge a company’s ability to standardize maintenance practices across multiple sites. Further, traditional maintenance personnel do not have sufficient time to keep up with IT advances such as cyber security. In these circumstances, the availability of remote support at the appropriate time, becomes invaluable.
Scheduled maintenance
Scheduled maintenance is rarely wholly convenient, however there are more and less convenient times for scheduled maintenance. If a major disruptive event is not pre-empted with the help of condition monitoring or predictive maintenance solutions, companies face having to perform maintenance at the least convenient times, such as at peak operation times, or at night, which can be difficult and costly.
Safety and cybersecurity
The importance of personnel safety, operating systems and data is crucial. These are valuable assets for a business to guard and protect. Recent data breaches in major companies and ransomware attacks such as the Colonial pipeline demonstrate such threats and the need to plan for those risks.
If you would like to learn more, visit the Genix Datalyzer website