Hear how TransAlta is extending PI to improve Operations and Maintenance at their Power Plant in Centralia, Washington. In this session you will hear from both a Plant and a Corporate perspective about initiatives that TransAlta is undertaking - starting with the Centralia Plant and targeting to extend these solutions across the entire fleet of operations.
This presentation will show how a cross-functional, role based, easy to use and collaborative maintenance and operations solution can help add bottom line value to your organization. By leveraging OSI’s PI and NRX’s xVIp and ACM applications, TransAlta can effective manage both real-time transactions and structured asset data and empowering people to achieve ‘best practice’ maintenance and operational excellence.
The TransAlta Optimization Program (TOP) was struck as a corporate initiative to improve plant availability, and drive costs down utilizing Siemens solutions. This will be accomplished by providing a common integration layer from sensor to boardroom, combining both real time operational data together with business (ERP and marketing) data, establishing corporate standards and implementing a War room. The project is in progress as a pilot at TransAlta’s Centralia coal fired generation plant. This project is expecting a 1 year payback, and will then move into a corporate wide program.
Speaker
Paul Kurchina
Paul Kurchina is currently a Program Management Director at TransAlta which is based in Calgary, Alberta. Paul has lead initiatives that involved Plant Maintenance system implementations, and the integration of power plant and mining operations. He has been the key driver of the xAPP for Maintenance Work Management from a Customer perspective. He has been a speaker at a number of international conferences including TA Cook Maintenance Management Conferences speaking about North American best practices. Paul’s previous positions include at Ontario Hydro (IT Manager) and subsequently Pricewaterhouse Coopers (Business Development Director). In these previous positions he was responsible for getting large initiatives launched and taking them through to system support, he has also been involved in consulting services. Paul has been involved with the Americas SAP User Group since 1993. He has been involved in various user group leadership positions including PI-Generation, Plant Maintenance, Utilities, Production Strategies and Continuous Improvement and Enterprise Portals.