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AVEVA Maintenance Management Solution pays off for CF Industrial Fertilizer Plant
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Asset Management Systems (EAM)
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Applicable Industries
- Chemicals
Applicable Functions
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Asset Lifecycle Management
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
CF Industries, one of North America’s largest agricultural fertilizer producers, had been using a homegrown maintenance planning and tracking application developed on IBM System/36 computers and later migrated to the IBM AS400 platform. This system was effective in managing maintenance activities but keeping it in pace with CF Industries’ growing business was proving to be expensive, with investments already well over $1 million. Management reasoned that migration to a Windows-based system would enable them to continue and expand their automation-driven maintenance process improvement, while providing a familiar, easy-to-navigate desktop environment, and a standard, Internet enabled platform on which to build future enhancements.
About The Customer
CF Industries, Inc. is one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer products in North America. Its operations are organized into two business segments: the nitrogen fertilizer business and the phosphate fertilizer business. Principal products in the nitrogen fertilizer business are ammonia, urea, and urea ammonium nitrate solution, or UAN. Principal products in the phosphate fertilizer business are diammonium phosphate (DAP), and monoammonium phosphate (MAP). The company recognized early on that structured maintenance could have a significant, positive impact on both operational reliability and its bottom line. In the 1980s, CF Industries developed a powerful maintenance planning and tracking application on IBM System/36 computers and gradually migrated the application to the IBM AS400 platform.
The Solution
CF Industries set out to find software that would deliver the maintenance planning functionality they had been enjoying in the IBM environment while providing the flexibility they needed for growth. They located the required software in Avantis.PRO Enterprise Asset Management, an enterprise asset management software system. CF Industries has now standardized on the Avantis.PRO Enterprise Asset Management software as its core platform for collection and storage of data on MRO inventory, procurement, and maintenance activities. They also use Avantis.DSS decision support software to analyze this data for continuous process improvement and have supplemented their system through adoption of standard catalog descriptions and categories for all MRO items, completed with the help of catalog management solutions provider I.M.A. Ltd. This system is designed to automate maintenance planning and tracking activities on nearly 50,000 asset entities, including vessels, pumps, rotating equipment, and electrical motors. It also helps manage and analyze MRO inventory and procurement on more than 60,000 inventory items in the four CF Industries manufacturing locations.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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