How Oniqua Can Help Power Generation Owners
A moderately large investor-owned utility that operates a 1970s-era, 1100-MW pulverized coal plant, for example, could benefit greatly from application of the Oniqua Analytics Suite. While base load plants like these have operated fairly reliably throughout their lives on various types of coal, many utilities are either planning, are in the midst of, or have completed efforts to extend the useful life of their plants. Improving some of the business systems used at the plant, especially procurement and inventory systems, would be a logical complementary project to these upgrades.
Operating largely unchanged for many years, inventory and procurement systems at many utilities have relied on long-standing recommendations from local suppliers, informal communication with plant maintenance personnel and the experience of buyers. Oniqua can improve the efficiency of these legacy systems.
In a situation like this, Oniqua recommends an initial meeting with the plant manager and a team of key plant personnel to agree upon goals, identify opportunities for improvements in procurement and inventory procedures, and specify the tasks and approaches needed to attain these improvements. After approximately a three-month set up and break-in period, the utility is likely to begin realizing business and operational benefits, such as the following:
- The utility will restock more efficiently the replacement parts critical to power plant reliability, and avoid restocking parts not crucial to reliability (reducing inventory costs).
- Power station accountants will write off surplus and obsolete stock.
- Use of automation will reduce time spent managing the spares inventory for the plant.
- Based on a series of criteria defined in the project, the team will stop conducting business with poorly-performing vendors and rely on high performance vendors, improving the delivery service levels of plant parts suppliers.
- The utility will consolidate purchases and optimize use of vendor-held stock and consignment arrangements.
Overall, plant reliability is likely to actually increase, while the size and cost of the spares inventory decrease. Based on metrics gathered in the first year, most projects like this one pay for themselves in less than 12 months. After this initial procurement and inventory implementation, most utilities are likely to be so pleased with this performance – and the rapid implementation without significant disruption – that they will go on to implement the maintenance and reliability modules of the Oniqua solution.
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