Maintaining a plant is a challenge that requires deep knowledge and great listening abilities. When it comes to keeping valves at peak performance, we need to listen to plant personnel, suppliers and to the valve itself. When plant maintenance and reliability managers consider all sides, they get the full story and the best valve performance.
Plant personnel are on the front lines. By being on site every day working with the plant, employees develop years of in-depth knowledge about each valve and its use in a specific application. Plant personnel understand the importance of reliability and preventing unplanned shutdowns. They also have years of knowledge about how and when problems occur, and have insider knowledge about impending changes to the plant.
Then again, valve suppliers know why certain materials, sizes, shapes and configurations were chosen for various products and which ones are important for specific applications. Suppliers acquire experience across hundreds of similar plants and can advise plant managers on what to do to avoid problems. That’s when they take on an even more important role as a reliability partner.
Yet somehow, it has been difficult to put all the relevant information in one place, to make fast decisions and reduce risk. When supplier knowledge and plant experience are combined, managers get a much more complete picture of what’s going on with their installed valve base.
Neles completes the story
At Neles, we strive to develop strong partnerships that are based on communication and trust. First, we get to know plant managers and their equipment needs. This might include finding the ideal equipment specifications or helping them understand what is needed to support different processes. We look into how the equipment will be used, maintained and supported throughout its lifecycle and then help them determine what is the best product and service option for their plant.
Over the years, we’ve learned how to foster high-quality collaboration. We find that the more transparent back-and-forth communications are, the better is the plant’s performance.
Your valves are talking – adding digitalization to triage plant problems
In addition to fostering great partnerships, we offer you the added benefit of digitalization to get the data needed to better monitor the condition and performance of your equipment. Without data, you just don’t know what the situation is or where the problems are.
Neles has decades of experience with implementing digitalization to help plants squeeze out a few more percentages of performance. We’re not new to this game. In fact, we’ve been using intelligent systems since 2000 to optimize plant operations. And now you can easily use these smart solutions too.
Take our Expertune PlantTriage™ system, for instance. This is a control-loop-based monitoring system that connects to the plant control system and extracts data about the instruments and valves. This big data tool helps deliver insight on how a plant is performing and how performance levels can still be improved to get a better competitive edge.
With Expertune PlantTriage data, plant operators and managers then know what the best practices areto optimize their processes. It’s all about finding and prioritizing problems with instrumentation, valves and controls, and then getting that information to the right people to help them make the right decisions and schedule the right actions.
Joining forces for better results
By joining forces, we can combine the expertise and insight of your plant personnel with our own equipment knowledge to help plant managers maintain the greatest factory reliability. With the addition of big data tools, such as the PlantTriage solution, you get access to the details that matter to accurately target and replace the right valves at the right time.
When working in a reliability partnership, it’s easier for both sides to grasp the complete picture. Requirements are understood more clearly. Proposed equipment better meets specific needs. And problems are more quickly resolved or even completely averted.
As a result, shared expertise keeps plant performance and reliability at the highest level. And this is the way we look forward to working with you to deliver greater benefits.
Text originally published in 2020, and slightly updated in April 2022, due to the company name change to Valmet.
