“ABB Full Service” helps customers significantly reduce maintenance cost while improving efficiency
Beijing, China, March 5, 2009 – ABB, the leading power and automation technology group, has renewed an agreement valued at $159 million to manage the maintenance and increase productivity at four plants in the Werk Bobingen industrial park near Munich, Germany. The company first began delivering ABB Full Service at the site in 1999, for polyester product manufacturers Johns Manvillle, Performance Fibers, Trevira, and Teijin Monofilamen. They have since renewed the agreement several times, demonstrating the customers’ recognition in ABB’s performance in maintenance services.
With the increasing gains in technology innovation, manufacturing equipment has become more complicated and sophisticated. More and more manufacturing enterprises have begun outsourcing their asset maintenance services to a third party in order to deploy an advanced and efficient maintenance system at a minimized cost, allowing them to focus on improving the competitiveness of their core businesses. A recent study by Frost & Sullivan, a global research firm, predicts that the worldwide market for outsourced-maintenance services will continue to grow at a fast pace, as manufacturers push aging machines to their limits while at the same time trying to reduce costs.
ABB Full Service is an outsourcing maintenance service, helping manufacturing enterprises ensure equipment performance, lower maintenance costs and secure the reliability and stability of equipment in daily operations, thereby significantly improving the efficiency, productivity and profitability of their products.
Rather than focusing on maintaining the normal operation and reliability of its customers’ manufacturing equipment, as is typical of most outsourcing services, ABB Full Service aims to comprehensively improve asset output and performance. Leveraging its advanced technology and collective experience with delivering maintenance services to a variety of industries for the past several decades, ABB Full Service boasts a unique maintenance management system and a strong technical support team. ABB Full Service makes a point of addressing the specific demands of each customer so as to comprehensively improve its level of maintenance management. With its performance-based service, ABB helps manufacturers reduce maintenance costs as well as improve the reliability of equipment, resulting in a dramatic improvement in overall equipment effectiveness and profitability.
During the implementation process, ABB follows a proven methodology to comprehensively review and evaluate the customer’s equipment, and then formulates a tailored equipment maintenance management system and implementation program. During each step of implementation, total support is available from ABB sites worldwide, ensuring the preset targets are achieved at the end of each stage. To elevate the performance and effectiveness of ABB Full Service, both the improvement of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the increase of the customer’s profitability are taken into consideration. ABB views their Full Service program as a long term partnership with customers that enables them to not only reduce costs, but more importantly, create sustainable growth in terms of overall equipment effectiveness and profitability.
With the start of the new cooperation with the four polyester product manufacturers at the Werk Bobingen industrial park, ABB will evaluate the plant processes to improve efficiency of the maintenance and repair operations, maintain the power generation and distribution facilities, as well as manage the general infrastructure, such as fire protection and site security, for the entire 80-hectacre complex. Since the service agreement was first signed in 1999, ABB has helped all of the companies significantly reduce equipment and building maintenance costs. At the four plants, their maintenance hours have been cut in half while production efficiency has increased remarkably.
“ABB’s combination of innovative service solutions, local knowledge and unsurpassed application experience has helped us build an effective relationship with customers at the site,” said Veli-Matti Reinikkala, head of ABB’s Process Automation division. “Our reputation for delivering results has been crucial to maintaining this successful partnership over the years.”
ABB has more than 150 similar strategic full service agreements, including global customers in the paper, minerals, chemical, oil, and gas industries. In Europe, ABB Full Service has rapidly enabled Nokia to upgrade its mobile production plant in Komarom, Hungary into a world class manufacturing facility, with a dramatic increase in overall equipment effectiveness and productivity, by achieving new production records and reducing the total number of equipment maintenance and repairs within the life cycle. From 2001, ABB Full Service has enabled Outokumpu Stainless, in Sweden, to achieve a number of improvements at its Degerfors steel mill, including an 80% increase in production volume in unit time, and a 58% ton drop in maintenance costs. ABB Full Service has also achieved outstanding results in emerging markets like Brazil. It helped a European chemical company lower maintenance costs while improving profitability of products in its Brazilian production facility.
With the fast growth of China’s manufacturing industry, more and more local manufacturers understand that the deficiency in equipment maintenance will be a detriment to improving the overall efficiency of their entire enterprises. In the current economic downturn, it is important for enterprises to improve equipment maintenance management, as well as reduce production costs, so as to improve competitiveness and put themselves in a better position to weather the economic crisis. ABB Full Service will help local manufacturers achieve these goals and improve their long-term performance.
ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve their performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 120,000 people. ABB has a full range of business activities in China, including R&D, manufacturing, sales and services, with 15,000 employees, 27 joint ventures and wholly owned companies, and an extensive sales and service network across 60 cities. To find out more about ABB in China, visit www.abb.com.cn.