Pictures of the Future      Spring 2005

Data on Call

High machine and plant availability is crucial to competitiveness. Here, remote maintenance can help to cut costs and accelerate production. Siemens is going one step further with an approach that will eventually make it possible to optimize entire plants via the Internet.

When a milling machine stopped working 25 years ago, a service technician had to travel to the site to repair it. In a worst-case situation, it could take days before the machine would mill components again. While mechanical components were most often to blame back then, today many faults are software-related. Companies therefore have service contracts that ensure swift assistance. In the ideal case, manufacturers cut the risk of failure even further by remotely monitoring machine operation and intervening promptly if anything goes wrong. In the future, remote services like this will have to be able to accomplish even more, because cost pressures will continue to rise. As a result, the availability of machines and facilities will be even more critically important.

Whether it’s a computer tomograph or a welding robot, a gas turbine or an electric locomotive—every customer wants prompt service in the event of failure. Remote services are already supplementing conventional ones. Problems can be solved over a hotline, or a plant can be monitored through a simple data line. "But fault correction is only part of the story. The other part is preventive maintenance, software updates, and plant optimization based on production data analysis," explains Dr. Rainer Speh of Siemens Power Generation (PG). Speh heads a team that’s addressing the opportunities and challenges of remote services on a company-wide basis in the context of Siemens’ top⁺ Innovation business excellence program.

"In the future, a power plant’s automation systems could be improved by remotely modifying control system software to boost the plant’s performance," says Speh. Gas turbines could be optimized by having the service provider compare transmitted operational data in real time with the way identical systems operate elsewhere, and suggesting improvements. Speh explains that maintenance could then be performed when it’s actually needed, rather than at fixed intervals. "That’s because faults are more readily noticed when a system is continuously monitored—that is, before faults have a chance to affect operations," he says.

Prerequisites for remote services include communications technologies that provide a high degree of networking within a plant via WLAN or other wireless connections with high bandwidths. Software is being used to an increasing extent to perform operations that used to be hardwired or embedded in hard­ware. As a consequence, subsequent changes can be made via remote maintenance.

Another important requirement is higher computer performance to process larger data volumes more swiftly. Images and other graphics provide a better decision basis than phoned-in descriptions of problems. Another advantage is that fault conditions can be much more quickly analyzed and identified on the basis of similar events and the history stored in the database. All this requires sophisticated sensors that can measure all available operational data continuously and reliably.

 In addition, the customer and the service provider must fully appreciate the advantages of remote maintenance and share the same interests. Further­more, customers should be prepared to accept manufacturers’ requrests to track data pertaining to their machines. Conversely, the service partner must be willing to share valuable information with the customer—information that’s been accumulated by monitoring the systems of various other customers. Security is another important subject the experts emphasize. Above all, data transmission must be highly dependable and secure, to ensure that it can’t be influenced by third parties.

These solutions require added investments, since today’s widely used network components, such as firewalls and routers, as well as security regulations prohibit direct connections between corporate networks. A remote services system employs servers located in specially secure network zones that are linked to the customer and the service provider via encrypted lines. These servers should also be accessible via the Internet, so that the full range of communications can be used. Naturally, they must also be secured against computer viruses.

Once all of these considerations have been fully addressed and the customer’s facility has been immunized against viruses, both partners enjoy substantial cost advantages. "Siemens Power Generation, for instance, has saved tens of millions of dollars in the past three years through preventive maintenance on gas turbines—and their customers have saved even more," reports Speh.

In another example, remote services have enabled the Power Generation Division of Vattenfall Europe—Europe’s fifth-largest energy provider—to pro­long the interval between complete maintenance checkups on its base load power plants by a year or more. During this maintenance procedure, the power unit is shut down for a considerable period, and every component is carefully inspected. Vattenfall’s power plants are operating with an availability rate of more than 90 %. "That’s as good as it gets," says Gerald Weiß, head of Technical Service at Vattenfall Europe Generation (see  Interview).

Foresight Cuts Costs. An optimized maintenance strategy can also yield dramatic savings in other areas. Siemens experts estimate that down times for all machine and plant categories can be reduced by up to 15 %. Effective maintenance can also substantially increase plant efficiency, and that can reduce energy costs by up to 20 %. Improved preventive maintenance planning also reduces required levels of maintenance personnel and replacement parts, which can result in further cost reductions of up to 25 %. Additional benefits, such as improved quality of products and lower environmental impact, are substantial, but more difficult to quantify.

Siemens already achieves about 30 % of its sales through service contracts and is committed to a comprehensive appoach in its remote maintenance activities. Virtually every Group is studying new business models. Cross-functional and cross-divisional teams are developing compatible interfaces for all remotely serviceable products, as well as a company-wide software plat­form. "Our vision is to conduct remote services through a single communica­tions channel," explains Speh. "Customers will then require only a single line to handle all their services."

In addition to equipment that generates electric power, power plants also have a control system, a phone system and heating and air conditioning systems, all of which require separate access lines. The situation is similar in hospitals and industrial plants.

Speh’s team is therefore developing an Internet-based service that can consolidate remote maintenance activities for products from different Siemens Groups. A prototype already exists that combines the Com Group’s telecom network management system, the Transportation Systems Group’s fleet management system for electric locomotives, and the Power Generation Group’s next generation power plant control systems. "Taken together, all of this enables us to not only identify what kind of system we’re connected to at the other end, but also to have it transmit current operational data," notes Speh.

Another part of this strategy is the company-wide service platform and a worldwide information and communications pool for Remote Services that supports professionals in different Groups with know-how, service bulletins and strategies. "The integration and interchange of data and service functions can substantially improve service performance—and consequently increase customer benefits," says Dr. Erich Niedermayr, who heads a cross-functional team at Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) that’s working on improving this situation.

At present, Siemens’ service centers are not interconnected. They are only connected directly to customers. But that’s changing. Niedermayr points out, for instance, that in Orlando, Florida, Siemens operates a service center for the centralized maintenance of gas turbines throughout North America (see Facilities and Power Plants). And another center located in Erlangen, Germany provides such services for Europe and Asia.

Meanwhile, a team located in Berlin that develops gas turbines and is thoroughly familiar with their characteristics, works closely with Orlando and Erlangen. Here’s how: Operational data from a plant in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. can alert Orlando to irregularities that are uncommon, yet which lie far below the alarm threshold. "Now specialists in Berlin or Erlangen who know all about that sort of plant can analyze the data and give timely advice to prevent impending damage," Niedermayr explains.

Versatile Service Platform. Such interactions are facilitated by a service platform that’s now under development. "All authorized participants get the same access to the available body of data," says Niedermayr. The Internet and the Siemens intranet allow very fast and simple access to machine data through a browser. The platform is based in part on the existing IT infra­structure of the Communications and Medical Solutions Groups.

Initial integration tests have been successful. Experts at Power Generation, for instance, have used the remote monitoring infrastructure originally designed for medical systems to monitor a power plant in Indonesia and even to correct faults.

The next step will be to determine what requirements have to be met so that other Siemens Groups can use the platform in the future. There’s no shortage of desire to accomplish this, since everyone is interested in saving money. Niedermayr estimates that the entire company could save more than 100 million euros by making full use of remote services. In addition, modules of the completed service platform could be marketed, and that would spread the use of remote services even further. Then Rainer Speh’s vision would become reality. "In the future," he says, "only the data will have to travel, not the service technicians."
                                                                                                    Norbert Aschenbrenner