MechChem Africa November-December 2020

Performance-based maintenance: a win-win financial model MechChem Africa talks to Burak Ozyurt, managing director for SKF in Southern Africa, about a new approach to delivering maintenance services in the region. Using remote diagnostics and several new onsite innovations, SKF is currently able to deliver long-term maintenance solutions that require no upfront investment from plant operators.

B urak Ozyurt believes that the maintenance maturity level of many industries in the Southern African region is not yet where it ought to be. This is due to a set of complex factors suchas skills gaps, restrainedbusiness environments, remote locations and often harsh operating environments, this in spite of the many, multinational OEMs operating in the region. “This often leads to short-term maintenance decisions on the ground, which is never ideal for the long-term health or financial viabilityof industrial plants inSouth - ern Africa,” he says. “Localisation is also seen as making it harder to raise maintenance maturity levels,” he continues, “but all multinational service providers trade by the same rules, making competition fair. This is particularly true when considering the use of advanced connected technologies for monitoring the health of plant equipment, establishing

maintenance needs and intervening early to avoid unscheduled shutdowns,” he says. “Remote monitoring equipment tends to be fromoverseas andexpensive, but it pleases me to see that, in Southern Africa as a whole, SKF is among a few companies capable of delivering these new technologies in this tough and competitive environment. We are receiving increasing numbers of enquiries for vibration analysis, oil analysis and thermog- raphy services,” he adds. Having established a remote diagnostic centre (RDC) in its new Marlin Road prem- ises in Johannesburg, SKF has started doing conformity checks to establish the viability of doing remote conditionmonitoring for plants across the region. “Our findings are very exciting. By installing condition monitoring and lubrication equipment that connects to our RDC, there becomes much less need for our staff to travel to remote sites. This is ex- cellent for clients, particularly in the current climate, for health and safety reasons as well as for cost efficiency, travel and labour cost reductions and for governance of the control of data. It gives clients the opportunity to outsource these often complex and costly tasks to experts, who are

crushers typically used on remote mines in Africa. In 2015, we acquired the specialist services of Lincoln Lubrication Systems and ManagementServices,whichwehavemerged into the broader remote maintenance offer- ing. This is a major step forward in terms of raising the maintenance and asset manage- ment maturity in the region,” he continues. In addition to Lincoln Lubrication, Ozyurt says that SKF has also recently acquired Recond Oil, a company that specialises in the manufacture of oil cleaning and recirculation. “In keeping with the modern concept of the circular economy, Recond Oil has developed its business around overcoming the environ- mental harm of having to dispose of used oil. The companymanufacturesmobilemachines that clean and recirculate the millions of litres of oil used on large sites, which not only results in better environmental compliance, but huge savings in operational costs accrue for operators,” he explains. To these systems, SKF adds fully auto- mated Lincoln lubrication systems, which enables large remote sites to overcome the ongoing need for maintenance personnel to manually lubricate their rotating equipment. “With our remote diagnostic capability, we are now able to combine all of these modern offerings to offer routine, customised and remote careof plant equipment,” saysOzyurt. Describing how SKF is making these op- tions affordable, he says that COVID-19 has demanded a new approach. “We are now on the edge of a massive economic crisis, with budget freezes on capex and opex.We at SKF have, therefore, developed a performance- based financial model that does not require any upfront investment from clients,” he assures.

able to shave costsby working remotely and collectively,” Ozyurt explains. W i t h t h e newly established RemoteDiagnostic Centre,SKFnowhas a number of data an- alysts who are able to provide state-of- the art diagnostics about the condition of the assets being remotely monitored. “Wehavealso invested further in technolo- gies such a lubrication, which is very important for heavy equipment such as the mills and

Lincoln Lubrication Systems and Management Services has been merged into SKF’s broader remote maintenance offering to raise maintenance and asset management maturity in the region.

14 ¦ MechChem Africa • November-December 2020