Reliability management consulting service!

Enterprise-wide reliability strategies can save global companies more than $50 USD billion a year in costs and increase capacity by more than 5 per cent

Taking on what may be industry’s greatest cause of excessive operational cost and unrealised profit, Emerson is changing the game for industrial producers like oil and gas, chemical, refining and power. For these 24/7 operations, which routinely suffer 5 to 7 per cent unplanned downtime losses due to poor maintenance practices, the company’s new global reliability management consulting practice is guiding leaders on how to better manage maintenance costs, improve reliability and increase profitability.

Reliability consulting fills the gaps in 

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With more than 25 years of leadership in developing reliability-enhancing technologies and services, Emerson is elevating the reliability cost challenge to the boardrooms of its customers with an economic-based management consulting practice aimed at saving companies millions in wasted expense and lost revenue.

“Chief executives are seeing the need to better manage physical assets for improved profitability,” says Steve Sonnenberg, president of Emerson Process Management. “With the right strategy, the typical $1 billion USD plant can save $12 million or more annually in maintenance costs – not including the corresponding operational and production benefits from reduced downtime. Extend that across a corporation’s network of facilities and soon reliability becomes the number one strategic lever for a safer, more profitable enterprise.”

By reducing scheduled and unscheduled downtime, companies can reduce their maintenance spend by 50 per cent or more, according to Solomon Associates, a leading benchmarking company in the process industries that tracks companies’ performance based on reliability and maintenance metrics. Optimised reliability practices – such as increased condition monitoring and analysis-based maintenance activities – drive down costs and also improve sales, quality, health and safety, and environmental compliance. These are all key factors affecting operational risk and shareholder value.

Corbion, a global food and biochemical company with plants in many countries, implemented standardised best practices of reliability over several years and reduced its global maintenance expense by one third while simultaneously dramatically increasing availability. These actions enabled the company to capture millions of euros in increased profits and sustained increases in capacity and production.

To expand its portfolio of reliability-focused services, Emerson recently acquired Management Resources Group, Inc. (MRG), a leading management consulting firm with 28 years of experience improving reliability in industrial manufacturing. This strategic investment complements Emerson’s existing lifecycle services offering, as well as the company’s leadership in ‘pervasive sensing’ which provides manufacturers with more operational insight through greater sensor-based coverage of their plants and assets. Through its consultants, Emerson can advise global customers on enterprise-wide reliability management programmes that connect the millions of data points collected in a plant, providing actionable information to trigger maintenance activities before equipment fails.

“If a company is not a top-quartile performer, it is losing millions in revenue and spending millions of euros on unnecessary maintenance costs,” says Robert DiStefano, MRG’s founder and former CEO. “Every euro not spent on maintenance goes directly to the bottom line. Our approach helps companies dramatically reduce downtime and enhance safety and compliance, increasing the stature and reputation of a company and ultimately providing better value for shareholders.”

A recent Solomon RAM study found companies reach the top-performing quartile when they have less than 3 per cent unplanned downtime and maintenance costs less than 2 per cent of Plant Replacement Value (PRV). For example, a $1 billion USD top-performing plant spends $12 to $20 million per year on maintenance expense. By contrast, poor performers spend two to four times more per year.