Veolia achieves reduced Total Cost of Ownership for its industrial customers by using technology, information management tools, and continuous improvement programs to eliminate unnecessary costs, perform work safer and faster, and return more productivity and uptime to the plant.
Business as usual - who benefits?
When it comes to operating a chemical plant or refinery, the costs associated with maintaining peak operations are astronomical, but they’re nothing compared to the losses a plant can experience when it goes down – or stays offline longer than planned.
Every industrial facility relies on contractors to perform industrial cleaning and maintenance services on equipment and process units. This work is done for a fee, but the price of the contractor’s service is only part of the total maintenance cost to the plant. There are related costs for the maintenance work, like crane support, scaffolding, PPE, waste transportation, and waste disposal. But there are also significant unseen costs associated with downtime on that equipment that deliver a big hit to the efficiency and production levels for the plant.
As a result, plant operators often take a firm stance on working with low-cost providers to minimize the expense of maintenance work. But as the old saying goes, “you get what you pay for.”
An alternate approach driven by eliminating cost and maximizing productivity
Alternatively, some plants are finding great value in industrial service providers like Veolia that approach service agreements to help manage their Total Cost of Ownership. This is achieved by using technology, information management tools, and continuous improvement programs to eliminate unnecessary costs for an operator, perform the maintenance work safer and faster, and return more productivity and uptime to the plant. This is a shift away from hiring the low-cost provider, but creates mutually-beneficial partnerships that enhance both parties’ competitive position.
Consider this example. At one Gulf Coast Chemical Plant, Veolia developed Touch Free technology to more effectively clean furnace units in the plant’s hydrocarbon units. This safer, more efficient solution reduced the downtime required for furnace cleaning by 50%. For furnaces that require cleaning eleven times a year and generate approximately $35,000 in revenue an hour for the customer, the impact delivered $4.6M in operational savings in one year alone.
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