VEKS, Western Copenhagen Transmission Company, is a district heating transmission company buying district heating at CHP plants and waste incineration plants and reselling it to 19 local district heating companies in the western area of Copenhagen. VEKS covers what corresponds to 150,000 families’ demand for heat and hot tap water.
Today VEKS is using a computer-based maintenance system as a natural tool in connection with the maintenance of the entire system. In this article, the story behind the introduction of computer-
based maintenance in VEKS is described, as are also the experiences (positive and negative) of these throughout the years.
Generally, the occurrence of computer-based maintenance systems has increased greatly through recent years. One of the reasons is new focus on maintenance. Maintenance is an increasingly important Computer-based maintenance systemparameter when preserving investments, personal security, and - when it comes to district heating - security of supply.
It is therefore important to have the correct management tools when maintenance is planned. The advantages of using computer-based maintenance systems in the district heating sector are:
• Systematisation of maintenance experiences (history)
• Reduction of breakdowns and downtime (hence, better quality and security of supply)
• Complete register of spare parts and suppliers
• Available data on all levels
• Use of dynamic control parameters (counters, replaced spares, visual observation, etc.)
Maintenance has been divided into “generations”.
The first generation covered the years up until the Second World War; the second generation from the post-war era until the mid-70’s; the third generation up until the millennium; and the fourth generation is the period that is going on now.
VEKS began the maintenance activities during the third generation, during which some of the key words were:
• Condition measuring
• Trustworthiness and maintenance accessibility
• Risk studies
• Multi-experts and teamwork
Key words for the present generation are:
• LCC/LCP(life cycle cost/life cycle profit)
• TPM/TQM(total productive maintenance/
total quality maintenance)
• Benchmarking
• Motivation
• RCM (reliability-centred maintenance)
• Standards
• Environment and energy-consciousness
• Resource-orientated maintenance
• Certifying
The challenges regarding the technological development put demands to the choices that must be made in connection with computerbased maintenance systems.
Computer-based maintenance – in retrospect
VEKS has been operating commercially since 1987. The company was still in the construction stage then, and maintenance was to be carried out on the operating part. In this period, the control was mainly carried out by foreign contractors in close co-operation with the consultants of the VEKS project. For the first two years, the maintenance was controlled by a solely paper-based system.
In 1989, a maintenance department was established in VEKS. Their own employees
became responsible of control and preparation of maintenance. The executing
part was outsourced to contractors in the fields of electricity, forging (welding etc.), excavations, heat exchangers, joint repairs and technical cleaning. In 1994, it was decided that the duty of forging and electrical maintenance should be delegated to VEKS’ own staff. Thus, the part of external contractors’ know-how was now firmly anchored in VEKS’ organisation. In this way, the quality of the data that were to be reported back to the application was increased, as the maintenance became part of a joint effort of the company’s employees.
In 1989, the first maintenance application was purchased and implemented in the maintenance work. The design and the typing of data in the application were primarily carried out by consulting engineers. The application was called API and was, as most applications at the time, DOS-based. It was used up until 1995 when the use of DOS-based applications was no longer optimal after the development and prevalence of Windows as control system. It was therefore necessary to find a replacement for API. After a selection procedure, the application Logihold was chosen.
One of the challenges of changing software is the conversion of the data of the existing system. The structure of the individual application is different, and this led to an inadequate data transfer. This was especially the case with the comment sections from the API application, where a large part of stored history could not be transferred to Logihold. This meant that the operating of API was maintained so that people had access to the history in cases where this was relevant.
Computer-controlled maintenance in VEKS – present status
In 2003, VEKS once again changed to a new maintenance system, Maximo from Maintech. New fields of activity led to this change. VEKS is now able to offer operation and maintenance of distribution companies, which makes it important to have a maintenance system that handles administration of several mutually dependent supply areas, so that there are no doubts as to what area in which the individual resource has been used.
Prior to the decision of purchasing Maximo, a pre-analysis was prepared. The analysis consisted of a series of recommendations based on interviews with all employees of the maintenance department and the employees of the operation department. An interdisciplinary committee had also been appointed which were to expose the wishes to interaction between the staff and the other administrative systems, such as economy application and CMS systems.
As was also the case with the first replacement,
it was decided to convert data from Logihold to Maximo. However, the history from Logihold proved not to be capable of being carried on to Maximo even though this was one of the demands from the interdisciplinary committee.
Like many other maintenance systems, Maximo is designed in modules. VEKS is using the following maintenance and system modules in Maximo:
• Locations
• Equipment
• Documents
• Codes of errors
• Job orders
• Maintenance routes
• Control of conditions
• Inventory control
• Stock transactions
• Staff
• Trade
• Terms regarding preventive
maintenance
• Security plans
• Purchase requisitions
• Purchase orders
• Register of suppliers
• Service agreements
• Tools
• History of job orders
• Interactive SQL search
• Filing of data
• Drawing up reports
• Drawing up user profile
• Screen adjustment
• Module adjustment
VEKS has 4000 locations of registered components in the system. These components
generate 2000 tasks annually. Approximately 1600 jobs per year relate to preventive maintenance.
Examples of preventing maintenance tasks are:
• Control tests at heat exchanger stations (security tests of emergency functions, etc.)
• Calibration of instruments
• Ventilation check
• Examination of leakage system
• Trace tests (of pump wells, ventilation and electricity cabinets)
• Water tests
Approximately 400 jobs per year are repairs.
Examples of these jobs are:
• Errors on regulating valves
• Errors on transmitters
• Errors on drain wells
• Errors on instruments
Each job is marked by its own job order
number, with hours and spare parts registered (internal as well as external resources). There is also the possibility of supplying the job with an error code categorised in “problem, cause, and repair”. This means that it is possible to search in error types across locations.
Maximo is also used for inventory control. VEKS has a number of special components
with a very long time of delivery. Therefore it is very important to have an exact control of components in stock, so that products can be reordered when the stock reaches an already defined minimum. Approximately 1400 product codes are registered in the stock module.
Conclusion/evaluation
Generally VEKS has found that the maintenance system is a good tool for securing and controlling maintenance. It can be used at most district heating stations and systems. However, it is important to be aware of one’s own level of ambition when choosing systems. If the level is set too high, one might risk being left with a too expensive system and a system that does not produce the wanted result because it is too comprehensive and complex. It is therefore recommended to carry out a demand analysis with regard to the investment early in the acquisition phase.
Even though VEKS had made these considerations when purchasing Maximo, the renewal of the system has caused a loss of data. Also a link to the economy system would have been proportionately expensive,
compared to output and price.
Companies that contemplate renewing an old system with a new one should consider if construction of the system from scratch might not be more profitable. This will ensure a quality that can measure up to the purchased product.
As a buyer, your position in relation to the supplier is better in case errors should occur on the system, since there is no need for discussing whether or not the error appeared due to data conversion from the old system. This does take quite an amount of resources, but there are advantages, too: It is possible to eliminate inconveniences from the old system, and achieve a better implementation, as the jobs of designing the new system can be delegated to several levels of the organisation. This results in a larger owner ship of the application.
