Next Wave Energy Partners Leverages eMaint to Create Customized Workflows To Manage 18,500+ Assets at New Facility
Customer Since: 2020 | Industry: Oil & Gas
Next Wave Energy Partners has harnessed the power of eMaint’s Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to manage and optimize over 18,500 assets at its new, state-of-the-art chemical plant.
Summary
eMaint’s customizable solutions and flexible system architecture have allowed Next Wave’s small team to effectively manage and optimize assets, as well as collect and analyze crucial data that maintenance teams and decision-makers need.
With eMaint, Next Wave now has:
- An effective system to manage 18,500 assets across a billion-dollar chemical plant
- Highly customized dashboards that provide real-time data to decision-makers
- A work request system that allows anyone to request fixes or process improvements
- Minimal supply chain issues thanks to leveraging multiple supplier and vendor options
- Ability to track KPIs including Mean Time Between Failures and Mean Time To Repair
BACKGROUND
Next Wave Energy Partners is an independent energy company focused on the development, operation, acquisition, and expansion of midstream and downstream petrochemical and fuel assets. Its new, state-of-the-art chemical plant uses ethylene to make an octane gasoline blend before sending it through pipelines to other facilities that make gasoline for vehicles.
But even before Next Wave Energy Partners’ new facility was built, its engineering and operations departments knew they would need a CMMS to optimize the billion-dollar plant.
“Our team compared their past experiences with other CMMS software and asked: ‘What features have we liked in the past? What works best with our facility?’” said Bryan Nagy, a Maintenance and Reliability Engineer at Next Wave. “eMaint was the best fit for us because of its customizability,” which Next Wave knew it could tailor to the unique demands of the plant.
CHALLENGES
Prior to the facility’s completion, Next Wave utilized advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate a comprehensive list of assets from engineering drawings, setting the stage for a deeply integrated asset management system. They then worked closely with eMaint’s technical support to develop tailored workflows that allowed their small team to operate and manage all 18,500 assets effectively.
“We told the eMaint support team: ‘Okay, this is exactly what we need to do,” Nagy said. “This is our workflow for the plant, this is how we do business. Can this system do this, this, and this?’ They were able to customize the majority of what we asked them.”
Even with a plan for system customization in place, as the facility was being built, Next Wave occasionally required additional changes, which they realized could improve workflows further. “It’s something we didn’t have before,” said Marcus Taylor, Maintenance Manager at Next Wave. “The flexibility of modifying the customizations has been nice.”
IMPLEMENTATION
After working with eMaint software independently to familiarize themselves with the system, Nagy and Taylor received first-hand training and further customization assistance to learn how to leverage the CMMS to its full extent. “eMaint’s personnel were very capable of helping us customize the system exactly how we needed to,” said Taylor.
eMaint’s flexibility also allowed Next Wave to make the system even more user-friendly. “Now, work technicians or anyone on site can submit work requests for anything, so they’re not pigeonholed into one area,” said Taylor. “They can submit requests, run projects, and manage assets – all directly from the system.”
Even though the backbone of Next Wave’s systems is managing work requests, they also use eMaint to track assets and build metrics. “We’re building all these metrics off the assets, such as Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR),” said Taylor. “eMaint has been instrumental in helping us track our assets and get the data we need.”
RESULTS
Next Wave Energy Partners now runs its full maintenance schedule directly out of a customized widget on the eMaint dashboard. “The dashboard’s ability to display widgets and other live data – and edit that information – that is huge for us,” said Taylor. “We go in to update management meetings, and we’re able to display information and immediately explain what’s going on in the system.”
In the coming months, Next Wave plans to add approximately 5,000 more assets into the system.
While Next Wave also uses eMaint CMMS to create work orders for broken equipment, the software’s benefits extend beyond helping keep equipment functioning correctly. Technicians can also make requests if they would like to see a system improvement, or request project changes while in the field.
eMaint’s customization has also helped Next Wave battle continued supply chain issues. “We use eMaint to list multiple vendors,” said Taylor. “If an individual supplier or vendor doesn’t have what we need, our maintenance teams can see other options and quickly find and get what they need.”
eMaint also allows Next Wave to easily plan future work. “We have about 1,200 work orders in the system. We’ve started our process of planning and scheduling, which is a big part of our customization. The system has worked great for us. It’s awesome. We love it!” said Nagy.
“Without eMaint, we wouldn’t be able to sustain our plant and we wouldn’t be profitable,” added Taylor.
“Success for me is our facility running 100% of the time. We’re a 24/7 facility, and as long as we keep developing, we can keep the facility operational 24/7. I personally believe that our maintenance department using eMaint is very efficient. So long as we continue this development path we have so far, we’ll be exactly where we need to be in the years to come.”
– Bryan Nagy, Maintenance & Reliability Engineer