Case Studies

Palm Beach Resource Recovery
Mainsaver part of Maintenance Process Upgrade

Palm Beach Resource Recovery is a unique power generation facility that burns trash in order to reduce the mass going to the county landfill and produces 50 megawatts of electricity. The facility processes 80% of the trash generated by Palm Beach County, roughly 3000 tons per day, and reduces the mass by almost 60%.

The facility, operated under contract by Babcock and Wilcox, has been using Mainsaver for over 10 years. Mainsaver is used for corrective work orders, preventive maintenance, and material management and purchasing. In 2007, a change in management resulted in a program to enhance utilization of Mainsaver. The multi-faceted project included;

1. New database server
2. Upgrading the database manager from Oracle 6 to Oracle 10
3. Upgrade Mainsaver from version 6 to version 10
4. Training for all users
5. Introduce a new asset structure
6. Reduce waste in the supply chain

In the past, it was difficult to identify problem assets since a very complex asset structure confused users when entering work orders and issued parts. A more consistent asset number scheme was developed. Mainsaver assisted in deleting old asset numbers and renumbering existing assets. The new structure uses an intelligent asset numbering schema consistent across the plant. An example of one area is shown below.

The asset number starts with a 2 character system identified and then a 2 character component identifier.

Materials Management

The plant also realized they were spending a great deal of money on consumable supplies such as gloves and welding rod.  Past data was analyzed and controls were put in place to reduce consumption of these parts.  Mainsaver assisted in creating reports to identify high consumption MRO materials and to summarize where these items are being used.

A simple query was created to rank parts usage considering the quantity used and the cost.

Palm Beach Resource Recovery has years of data available to identify consumption trends.

Corrective and Preventive Maintenance

Palm Beach Resource Recovery generates about 50 to 75 corrective and preventive work orders each day.  Corrective work orders may be entered by Operations personnel or Maintenance Personnel.  Work orders are closed by Maintenance technicians or ‘leadmen’.  Time and materials used are tracked to work orders.

Maintenance supervisors constantly manage the backlog of work orders using queries and reports.  The management report below provides a summary of the maintenance activity.

Maintenance summary report provides management information.

There are a total of 13 key performance indicators that upper management uses to manage the operations of the facility.  The two indicators most related to maintenance are boiler availability which is targeted at 89.9% and process line availability, targeted at 77%.  Maintenance supervisors carefully schedule preventive maintenance and stay on top of corrective maintenance to help exceed these target percentages.

IT Infrastructure

Mainsaver provided on-site services to upgrade both Oracle and Mainsaver.  Users were trained and ‘standard operating procedures’ were developed.  

Babcock and Wilcox was just awarded a 20 year contract extension for the operation of this waste-to-energy facility.  The contract value for the first phase of this extension is over $300 million.

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