Presentation: Reduce Maintenance Cost connection AF, RLINK and SAP PM in ERG

ERG is Italy’s main independent energy and petroleum group. Listed on the stock exchange since October 1997, it works in crude refining, petroleum product distribution and electric energy production. ERG currently accounts for about 19% of total Italian refining capacity and is the second largest refiner in Italy. Sales of petroleum products on the domestic market cover about 9% of Italian consumption. ERG sales of electric power account for about 2% of the domestic market. ERG produces and sells thermoelectric power, steam and gas through its subsidiary ERG Power & Gas.

The main plants are: ISAB Energy generates electricity at a 528 MW capacity power plant fuelled by syngas, which is made from the gasification of asphalt residues produced by the ISAB Refinery; ERG Nuove Centrali currently has an operating capacity of about 150 MW (480 MW after re-powering) and uses fuel oil and fuel gas as its feedstock. Every two years ISAB Energy shuts down its own units for maintenance. A complete maintenance cycle lasts 30 days and costs about 10 million Euros. Every non-production day costs around 600 thousand Euros in terms of operating margin. ERG management’s goal is to reduce downtime, reduce maintenance cost, give measurable objectives to the managers and maintain higher levels of unit performance. PI and SAP are the main systems in the plant. Connecting PI with SAP means that process, operation and maintenance engineers speak the same language and share the same assets.

The objective of the project was to reduce maintenance cost by moving from a corrective and calendar-based maintenance to a condition-based maintenance. This enables the maintenance supervisor or manager to optimize maintenance planning with better visibility into actual equipment condition. A list of all critical equipment has been created. SAPHierarchy, including plants, units, equipments and functional locations, has been charged in the AF database and the two asset databases have been synchronized with standard SOA interfaces; every day automatic maintenance notifications are generated in SAP if a PI counter’s value exceeds an established threshold. Those features enable maintenance planners to see asset health degradations in the form of predictive work orders in SAP. The goal is to reduce unnecessary costs by shifting traditional calendar-based maintenance to Condition-Based Maintenance, therefore reducing downtime.

Significance: ERG uses PI and SAP as the main systems in their plant. Connecting PI with SAP means that process, operation and maintenance engineers speak the same language and share the same assets, resulting in reduced maintenance costs.