Lifecycle Management as a business approach targets long-term value creation that impacts both strategic and operational metrics positively. This is particularly true when the operator and the supplier team-up to pool their knowledge and competence. One company who has recognized these benefits is the Canadian employer Goldcorp. The company has recently contracted services from ABB in a 3-year long-term service agreement (LTSA) for their ring-geared mill drive (RMD) in the Cerro Negro mine, located in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina. This represents the first LTSA won by ABB Switzerland on an RMD system.
ABB make use of their unique remote access platform to enhance the three main aspects of their service contribution, namely i) Lifecycle management services, ii) Scheduled maintenance services, and iii) Remote diagnostic services. The services include ongoing technology upgrades and maintenance support. Both are focused on extension of equipment life, minimization of unexpected shutdowns and increasing availability of the ring-geared mill drive system at the Goldcorp Cerro Negro plant.
Partnership for profitability
Lifecycle management services
A stable, long-term oriented cooperation requires a reliable organization. Consequently, ABB appoints an ABB Lifecycle Manager responsible for the complete service contract. The Lifecycle Manager leads the coordination accordingly to ensure that Goldcorp knows the maintenance costs in advance. The information eliminates uncertainty and strengthens the basis for the planning process.
The Lifecycle Manager works with his ABB teams to meet Goldcorp’s and ABB’s common goals of maximizing production and availability while minimizing costs and needed resources.
The Lifecycle Manager is also in charge of sharing important update information with Goldcorp as relevant technology improvements occur.
Operationally, Lifecycle Management services at the Goldcorp Cerro Negro plant include: i) a single contact person in ABB for the customer with complete responsibility for all LTSA inquiries with the support of a customer-dedicated service team, ii) communication and escalation plan definition and implementation, iii) progress meetings for tracking open LTSA issues and iv) management reports with agreed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
The full knowledge derived from several years of experience with ring-geared mill drive systems supports the Lifecylcle Manager and his team. It includes clear overviews of system integrity and malfunction risks. This knowledge is unique, not available from third parties and plays a big role in achieving the jointly set goals and full customer satisfaction in the Goldcorp Cerro Negro plant.
Scheduled maintenance services
The plant maintenance strategy with its scheduled maintenance is key to increasing profitability and extending equipment life.
The scheduled maintenance services have been ordered together with the lifecycle management services by Goldcorp since they are performed most effectively together. The scheduled maintenance service agreement with Goldcorp Cerro Negro is for one ring-geared mill drive (RMD) system at the concentrator plant for the 12, 24 and 36 months RMD services. This service is performed by ring-geared mill drive system experts backed up by their experience gained from the ABB global installed base.
Preventive maintenance is planned maintenance to improve equipment life and avoid any unplanned maintenance activity of the ring-geared mill drive system. The most obvious way to mitigate the risk of unplanned downtime is to do preventive maintenance. Proper maintenance of plant equipment can significantly reduce the overall operating cost and at the same time improve the plant productivity.
The inclusion of preventive maintenance insures against unexpected, unplanned events that not only cause production losses but often result in subsequent interruption of the down-stream processes. The cost of unplanned process interruptions increases rapidly for even the shortest interruptions.
Goldcorp will experience significant advantages by having the right schedule maintenance program in place. The complexity of service scheduling is simplified by assuring the availability of the people, where previously on-demand services could not be guaranteed. The economical use of maintenance workers is higher when work is done on a scheduled, proactive basis, instead of an unplanned reactive basis. Safety and quality conditions improve. Production losses diminish due to less ring-geared mill drive downtime. The anticipation of possible malfunction and the adoption of preventive actions extend equipment life and reduce the cost of repairs by reducing secondary failures, i.e. when parts fail in operation, they usually damage other parts.
Remote diagnostic services
The use of the remote connection enables instant support from the entire ABB service team (local Argentinian as well as global resources). Reaction, diagnostic and repair time is greatly reduced for almost any foreseeable situation related to the ring-geared mill drive system – mechanical, electrical or control.
Remote diagnostic services are designed to support critical complex systems. It allows ABB Service experts to access and troubleshoot ring-geared mill drive systems from anywhere in the world. ABB experts log on to the system remotely, investigate what the problem is and deliver recommendations for the next step or resolve problems immediately.
ABB technical specialists provide support to plant maintenance personnel with remote disgnostic services quickly. This offering has the capability to program and store the knowledge required to care for the customers’ systems. Remote diagnostic services capture data for the engineering teams to analyze and act upon while helping the customer’s team access real-time and historical information.
In addition ABB delivers four vital services for Goldcorp within the framework of the agreement. These are the SupportLine (telephone support), troubleshooting (remote emergency support), periodic maintenance reports and the condition monitoring which is a real time check of several variables and a prediction of the prompt future based on those throughout a mathematical algorithm developed within ABB; this system has also a notification service which alert a defined group of people by e-mail and sms in case of some variable deviating from the design functioning values compared to the predicted ones.
The objective of the SupportLine access is to support worldwide on any issue related to ring-geared mill drive systems. It is available 24 hours a day, and 365 days per year for answers and support in urgent situations. For Goldcorp, SupportLine informs the Lifecycle Manager (LcM) on the request or incident with its associated circumstances as inputs to the problem resolution. An ABB specialist is available via the SupportLine 24 hours per day, 365 days in the year.
Periodic evaluation of incidents and situations reveal improvement opportunities. With this in mind Goldcorp is provided with periodic maintenance reports, in total two each year. During the assessment of these reports, an ABB technical expert analyzes and evaluates all data collected via ABB remote access. A detailed general condition check report is issued with a summary of findings and recommended preventive and corrective maintenance actions.
Support excellence is never far away
The ring-geared mill drive is vital to the plant’s production process and qualifies for maintenance excellence. The combined Goldcorp and ABB efforts represent the cutting-edge approach for delivery of sustainable lifecycle cost reductions, cost predictability and equipment performance improvements.
The LTSA (Table 1) with remote diagnostic services enhances overall performance and maintenance excellence by more than either Goldcorp or ABB alone achieve while establishing real-time links that ensure that support excellence is never far away.
