Long-term reliability is a must at the mill. For instance, a frequency converter failure is likely to cause a break in production and a big monetary loss.
“A mill of this size runs continuously at full capacity until the annual service shutdown,” said ABB’s Sales Manager Jorma Näsinkoski. “The tendency is now that stops are being made every year and a half, or even closer to every two years. The rest of the time, the equipment and systems must run at full capacity without failures.”
It’s essential that if service is required for the drives, it can be done without disturbing the operation of the drive or can be scheduled during the mill’s service shutdown.
“Our mill’s most important performance indicator is its availability rate, which we target to maintain at 98 percent and above on an annual rate. Maintenance plays a critical role in ensuring this high level of performance,” said Timo Merikallio. ”At the same time, we simply don’t have all expertise at the mill. Therefore, maintenance based on cooperation with trusted partners is key for us.”
The electrical power distribution system at the mill includes 650 frequency converters alone. Condition monitoring is facilitated by extensive device-specific alarms and through the ABB Ability™ connection, ABB experts can provide instant support in tackling problems. Furthermore, analyzing the data collected from electrical systems and devices for its predictive value also enhances reliability over the long-term.
“Monitoring helps us to do maintenance on the right device at the right time, instead of simply servicing all devices at predefined intervals. This will optimize both costs and quality of upkeep,” said Ossi Puromäki.
The customer feedback has been positive, underscoring ABB’s expertise and ability to deliver where others could not. For example, the customer indicated that it is extremely important to have ABB’s strong local support readily available in central Finland, with quick response in the Finnish language. This was something that differentiated ABB from the competition.
“I asked the customer why they bought from ABB,” said Jorma Näsinkoski. “The answer was clear and did not refer to any technical feature or performance of the motors or drives. The reason was ABB people’s broad know-how.”
ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations connects services that leverage the availability and transparency of data from the Ability platform into a data ecosystem. By connecting ABB and customer experts to actionable data, advanced analytics tools and predictive monitoring in a collaborative environment, advanced automation solutions can be implemented and optimized. Problems can also be quickly diagnosed and corrective actions implemented, with continuous improvement efforts prioritized.