Risk Mitigation, Reward Maximization: GE Vernova's APM Strategy in Action

Picture this: You manage more than 10 power generation sites with a cumulative total of approximately 5000 mission-critical assets, such as turbines, generators, and boilers.

As operating and maintenance (O&M) budgets directly impact profitability, can you see which assets pose the most risk to your business? Are you prepared for costly unplanned failures or events that could impact production (and your bottom line)?

If not, we believe the answer is GE Vernova’s Strategy application in Asset Performance Management (APM).

Traditional paper-based tracking or in-house systems fall short when it comes to defining, controlling, and improving holistic asset management strategies. Existing processes may present many challenges:

• Synergy with asset health: If your asset maintenance strategies aren’t tied to a 24/7 view of asset health and condition monitoring, there will always be inefficiency from the inability to predict asset failure, reactive maintenance, ad hoc part replacements, and costly downtime.
• Content for diverse asset types: Each energy vertical has a wide spectrum of specific asset types (Ex: pumps, compressors, turbines, etc.) that require tailor-made content on risk, failure modes, and mitigating actions. Developing configured content in-house is extremely time-consuming.
• Harmonization with EAM/CMMS systems: Work orders and maintenance tasks are typically managed using EAM/CMMS systems. However, with the onset of new tools, there’s a pressing need to execute equipment strategies and corresponding maintenance plans in a single integrated application.
• Scaling based on organization maturity: Depending on the maturity of the maintenance department within your organization, there could be a business case to move to a future closed-loop state of predictive analytics and integrated work processes.

Here are three ways GE Vernova’s APM Strategy application helps owner-operators and asset reliability leaders optimize their asset maintenance strategies. 

1. Software to Prioritize Critical Assets

A starting step for any risk-based asset strategy management program is a detailed criticality assessment to understand the negative impact or consequence that an asset or system has on the business. In most cases, roughly 20% of the asset population represents 80% of the largest potential negative consequence. With GE Vernova’s APM Strategy application, you can determine which assets and systems have the highest risk from a criticality value derived from your organization’s definitions. This can be used to prioritize O&M expenditures for risk-based asset management strategies and subsequent corrective work.

Once failure modes and potential mitigating actions are understood using RCM/FMEA methodologies, you can find the right balance between the level of risk mitigation desired based on asset criticality and the cost of the action plan. This is done with a combination of “what-if” risk analysis to select/deselect mitigating actions and corresponding risk profile and cost projection charts to understand the subsequent impact. For example, if a centrifugal pump has been defined as a critical asset with a prescribed mitigation action such as periodic greasing selected – the charts in APM Strategy will indicate the % increase/decrease of risk vs. the cost incurred. 

A focused approach to asset maintenance with optimal investment allocation and the removal of unnecessary costs greatly helps in maintaining O&M budgets and enhancing enterprise profitability.

2. Quicken Time to Value with Configured Content

To help you quickly implement asset strategies across your enterprise and benefit from them faster, GE Vernova has introduced Asset Strategy Accelerators (part of our overall Accelerators portfolio). These pre-built maintenance templates detail risk and mitigating actions for a wide spectrum of assets, including rotating, mechanical, electrical, safety, and controls. Currently, Asset Strategy Accelerators include content for a wide range of industries such as Power Generation (820+), Oil & Gas (650+), Metals & Mining (10), and Grid (10).

Further, with Accelerators Balance of Plant (BoP) asset strategies it’s possible to quickly expand your asset strategies beyond just critical assets to BoP assets. Accelerators BoP asset strategies are available for various supporting and auxiliary energy producing equipment.

Additional benefits include:

• Agnostic capability, ensuring strategies are not limited to GE equipment.
• Faster time to value for APM installations.
• Quicker prioritization of maintenance efforts.
• Reduced plant personnel resource requirements for strategy development.

3. Streamline Execution of Asset Strategies

From an execution standpoint, the integration of EAM/CMMS with APM is a vital element in reducing manual work, improving transparency, and optimizing the overall maintenance process.

The traditional process would be:

• Users importing their existing maintenance plans from EAM/CMMS systems into APM.
• Users review and modify those plans in APM.
• Users send the plans back to EAM/CMMS for execution.

This process is inefficient.  

The solution is the Asset Strategy Implementation (ASI) module in APM Strategy (also available in the cloud for greater scalability and performance). With this tool, users can create “Implementation Packages” to manage the maintenance plans, maintenance items, task lists, and operations used to execute work. The solution also allows multiple strategies to be combined in a common package and implemented into the EAM/CMMS systems. The ability to harmonize equipment strategies and corresponding maintenance plans in an integrated application is a critical piece for a holistic risk-based maintenance approach.

The energy industry is changing quickly, with asset-intensive organizations already in deep conversations around reliability, affordability, and sustainability. According to a report published by McKinsey on the Future of Clean Energy, “About 84% of global power demand, which is estimated to grow 3× by 2050, can be met using renewable energy”. 

As firms look ahead to this net-zero future, the proliferation of renewable generation assets has added another layer of complexity from an operational standpoint — how do you strike the right balance between new investments while maintaining aging fossil fuel-running assets? While there are several APM solutions in the market, a missing element in most of these solutions is an application that bridges your existing strategies for maintenance, replacement, and continuous improvement with your energy transition roadmap.  

With APM Strategy, you could establish and maintain a risk-based asset management program for all your old and new assets and further maximize return on operating and maintenance expenditures. To learn more, check out our interactive demo.