Challenge: For an industrial site to meet its production and profit goals process availability must be high, and key to this is having utilities like steam, electric, air, and water delivered as needed. Utility reliability is typically driven by two things; individual equipment uptime, and the interaction of various process units when there is an upset or breakdown. With preventive or run to failure maintenance strategies, there is usually little or no warning of device or equipment failures that interrupt normal operations. Additional difficulty occurs when a major utility unit such as a boiler experiences an issue. The loss of one producing unit often puts strain on other parts of the system, can result in a cascade of trips, and in a worst case scenario, shutdown of the entire site.
Solution: Emerson’s control and information solutions help industrial sites stabilize operations and improve reliability by providing full real-time asset health information, bringing predictive intelligence capability to identify equipment issues early, and isolating any process problems when they occur. Emerson’s Advisor Suite delivers real-time health information from assets including mechanical equipment, electrical systems, instruments, and valves so that planned maintenance actions can be taken before equipment fails. Emerson’s SmartProcess™ strategies improve unit response to demand changes and make operations easier during upset conditions. For example, SmartProcess Header assists by immediately and automatically rebalancing the steam system after an upset without manual intervention.
