My job is to sell the services and parts our Steam Power business offers to industrial operators like you. I also consider it my role to help you understand the broader context of what’s happening in our industry, and the trends across our service provider community that can affect your operation. These days, when I speak to customers like you about their outage strategies, there’s one overriding message I try to convey….. you need to start extending the service planning timelines for your power equipment.
Across the power services landscape, capacity constraints are being seen…. and will likely continue for the foreseeable future. Our collective service community supports steam plants that generate electricity for the grid, and sites that power industrial applications alike… consequently, all power equipment operators are being affected by this high-demand environment.
That’s why I’m counseling customers like you to “meet us in the middle” so to speak. By that, I mean initiating your service planning earlier than you have historically. In particular, this applies to services including your planned outage projects- as well as parts orders- both those tied to outages and otherwise.
This approach can help prevent potential hurdles including:
- Missing preferred service windows, especially during peak season periods (Fall and Spring)
- Delays in parts/equipment delivery due to extended lead times
- Project lags if service centers reach full capacity
I understand that the longer your planning horizon becomes, the more challenging it could be in terms of budget, resources and other factors that impact your operating rhythm. That said, keep in mind the risks of potential delays with your service activities… in particular for aging assets. Knowing that a majority of our equipment fleet is nearing- or has surpassed- 40 years of operation, the risks to your production line’s reliability are a technological reality.
For our part, we’re also being proactive in strengthening our service platform to support your needs in this high-demand environment. Here are some priority actions we’re taking:
Optimizing our outage process
This framework applies our global fleet experience to:
- Develop precision project scoping to limit costs and outage cycle time
- Uncover efficiencies by analyzing comparable service histories and operating profiles
- Predict unplanned service scope to minimize emergent work
- Expand on-site capabilities- such as component machining- to further compress project duration
Building on our parts resources and capabilities
Knowing that parts is the ‘tip of the spear’ when it comes to your outage service needs, our team is expanding resources in a number of ways, including:
- Onboarding new sourcing partners for supply chain redundancy, while challenging our existing suppliers to accelerate cycle times. As example, one of our U.S.-based suppliers has recently compressed its manufacturing/delivery time of select steam turbine buckets by four months
- Broadening capabilities to deliver parts in ‘ready to install’ packages for quicker turnaround times. For instance, we have suppliers that deliver pre-assembled valve kits that arrive on site installation ready
- Optimizing on-site machining capabilities, which eliminates the need to ship parts to a service center during your outage. Our service teams can restore/repair blade valves, rotors, housings, casings and more to slash the cycle times of those activities
- Proactively ‘deep-diving’ with suppliers to forecast supply chain readiness- and cost projections- through insights such as materials/minerals availability, as well as side-stepping potential obsolescence issues driven by discontinued parts
- Adding engineering resources to accelerate the research and design efforts needed for breakthrough parts performance and quality
As an energy transition partner, our team is laser-focused on positioning our service platform- and portfolio- for today’s power market realities…. however, your collaboration makes a difference as well. That’s why I can’t emphasize enough how critical it is for us to meet in the middle and work together to keep your operation running, without interruption.
