predictive maintenance in the oil and gas industry

Mid-tier oil and gas companies cannot afford unplanned downtime. Research has shown that unplanned downtime can cost tens of millions of dollars a year in lost productivity and repairs, in addition to the physical risks associated with equipment failure. Fortunately, the appearance of the Industrial Internet of Things, or IIoT, is allowing operators to expand their ability to monitor performance, temperature, flow and more with low-cost sensors and make better maintenance decisions based on the data they collect.

Preventive maintenance and its benefits?

Preventive maintenance uses data such as temperature, vibration and flow rate that are collected by sensors and then analyzed for warning signs or abnormal results. This data is then rummage-sale to forecast when maintenance must be completed to avoid degraded efficiency or equipment failure.

For mid-tier oil and gas companies, cost control is always important. Companies that can better manage operating expenses during a recession are more flexible and better equipped to handle margin pressures. Preventive maintenance can help save costs by requiring fewer hardware checks and unnecessary updates.

A good preventive maintenance program will help you make more informed decisions based on your maintenance budget. Operators can further control costs, enabling efficiencies against service costs to determine service schedules. Due to the remoteness of assets, the maintenance costs of individual sections increase or decrease depending on logistics. A definitive understanding of the degradation in transmission line efficiency will create an environment for making truly informed decisions regarding maintenance planning.

Preventive maintenance script

To begin developing a preventive maintenance plan, organizations must follow several steps:

Compare your current capabilities - how much are you currently spending on maintenance and how much downtime do you have?

Identify opportunities - where can you add sensors to collect critical data? Are there bottlenecks or access points causing problems? Create pilot programs with well-defined metrics to see if preventive maintenance improves results.

Get a scalable, automated preventive maintenance solution designed from the ground up and built on a platform that resists downtime.

Oil and gas predictive maintenance solutions

Preventive maintenance is best performed from the periphery - in a process area close to a pump, compressor or terminal - rather than in a remote location, in a control room or in the cloud, where transmission, bandwidth, latency issues and data integrity can arise.

Stratus Technologies offers an industrial-grade integrated redundant platform designed specifically for peripherals. It is ideal for any predictive maintenance solution in the oil and gas industry that requires reliable data collection in mission-critical environments.

Summary For midsize oil and gas companies, preventive maintenance has many advantages over reactive or scheduled maintenance, including extending equipment life, optimizing equipment performance, reducing equipment downtime, and reducing wasted time team's. To learn more about how Stratus Edge Computing can help midsize oil and gas companies, click here or speak with a leading Stratus computing expert.