TMMonitor Maintenance Management Software Customer Interview

Submitted by Yrjo Komokallio on Wed, 05/06/2020 - 13:25

The new TMMonitor/Lodestar 2.0 version will be launched this month in May. We interviewed our Austrian Customer to understand the value of the software for turbine end users.

Predictive maintenance software designed for gas turbine modules and component life & outage tracking.

By careful inspections and parts-planning over the gas turbine lifetime, the risks and maintenance costs can be optimized, providing high reliability and reduced cost of maintenance.

As the gas turbine is very complicated and high maintenance need components, many challenges are faced in parts tracking and inspection management:

  • It is challenging to plan and estimate a budget for future maintenance needs in a cost-efficient way. You need to know the complete and exact history of the turbine prior accurate estimate can be established.
  • The management of history information and maintenance planning is too time and money consuming.
  • It is not always easy to know what parts are on stock and what is their useful life and condition.
  • Information on maintenance inspections and parts available is not easily and fast available to those who need it.

Several years ago, an operator with several gas turbines feeding the European grid made the step up to predictive maintenance. They were one of the early adopters of TMMonitor Gas Turbine Parts Management. Recently we interviewed with the manager, here is what he said:

Q: What benefits have you seen using TMMonitor?

A: Faster access to data in all situation that requires access to gas turbine inspections, reports, parts data. Multiple persons can efficiently operate TMMonitor. Finally, we have a complete picture of the maintenance.

With TMMonitor, we precisely know the condition of the turbines, remaining lifetime of parts and parts/consumables required for forthcoming inspection. I, as a manager, also need to see into the future. The simulator makes it possible to make multiple scenarios depending on our future operating plans, reserve parts and plan upcoming inspections.

Before we got TMMonitor, the gas turbine inspection history and parts data were managed in Excel locally by different persons in each power plant and the information was not accessible to the maintenance team in the headquarters.

The consumables module provides us lists of what consumables are needed for an upcoming inspection so we can check our stock and fill in missing parts in advance. Consumables were often forgotten until it was too late.

Q: Were there any surprises?

A: We were surprised by the number of spares we had, not all of them could not be fitted into the GT anymore due to performed upgrades. That was a waste.

Q: How was the cost compared to the benefits?

A: The software paid itself back in less than a year; We were able to avoid unnecessary repairs on GT#2 as the software indicated the repaired parts available on stock which could fit the GT. We also saved time in a forced outage because the right field personnel and repair engineers could immediately access the history of parts and last inspections installed into the turbine.

Q: Has the implementation changed the way you or your team work?

A: We now have one person for all five gas turbines that can manage the inspection planning and parts management. We have been able to release engineers to other projects like daily maintenance and our new waste boiler maintenance activities.

Q: How hard was the integration?

A: That was easy; we did not need to invest in any additional IT hardware. As a software as a service, we just needed a browser to access the data. The developer made the initial setup of the software and trained us on how to use it.

Q: Would you recommend the program to others?

A: Certainly. It centralizes the data and makes it possible to access data by multiple persons and different locations quickly. It’s also continually being further developed with new features released based on Clients feedback.

Q: Did you consider other sources/competitors? Why did you choose TMMonitor?

A: There was no other software like it on the market, and we think that is still the case.

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