September-October 2018 NPJ

EPRI Tool Optimizes Maintenance Costs By Jeff Greene, Electric Power Research Institute. Jeff Greene Jeff Greene is a Principal Project Manager within the Nuclear Maintenance Applications Center (NMAC) at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He joined EPRI in 2013 as a Technical Leader within NMAC. Prior to that, he was a Project Manager within the semiconductor industry for 5 years. Before that he spent 7 years in the Navy as a Submarine Officer. His nuclear experience came while serving as the Reactor Controls and Communication Division Officer onboard a nuclear-powered submarine. Jeff is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with a B.S. in Physics and a Master’s degree in Engineering Management from Old Dominion University. He is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Six Sigma Green Belt. His current research activities focus on the Preventive Maintenance Basis Database, Value Based Maintenance Initiatives, Condition Monitoring, and FLEX Equipment. Nuclear plants are using the Electric Power Research Institute’s Work Order Data Visualization Tool to view large amounts of data for informed maintenance strategy deci- sion-making. At Exelon’s Quad Cities facil- ity and other sites, the tool has helped reap significant material and labor cost savings. Because many of today’s nuclear power plants are expected to operate for several more decades, an effective equip- ment maintenance program can have a big impact on overall plant competiveness. EPRI’s new Work Order (WO) Data Vi- sualization Tool is helping nuclear plant personnel view historical equipment work order data to accurately identify equip- ment maintenance costs at their sites. The software tool assists EPRI members in developing value- based maintenance (VBM) strategies that consider both equipment reliability and cost. It consists of standardized tabs and dashboards de- veloped with the in- put of several EPRI members. To date, 20 members are sup- plying their work or- der data to a central- ized database. Since the tool’s release in March 2017, mem- bers have developed further beneficial uses for the tool as part of an EPRI-led VBM supplemental proj- ect. Exelon was an early adopter of the tool and in early 2017, providing maintenance plans for all of its nuclear sites. It applied the tool within its corporate office to visualize maintenance strategies across its fleet and uses an “Advanced Feature” to forecast maintenance needs and cost savings. Since then, individual Exelon sites have discovered a variety of other uses for the tool. “Before getting the WO Data Visualization Tool we had no way to easily visualize a list of the preventive and corrective maintenance tasks for a given system or component. With the tool, not only can we pull up this list in one or two clicks, but we can sort fields of interest, like material and labor-hour costs, to prioritize what we’re trying to see,” said Mita Trivedi- Zhu, Quad Cities preventive maintenance program owner. “This data has greatly assisted our decision-making process as we review and update component maintenance strategies using a more value-based maintenance perspective.” Optimizing Preventative Maintenance with the WO Data Visualization Tool Over the past year, Quad Cities has used EPRI’s WO Data Visualization Tool to gain specific insights and drive decision- making following more than 30 detailed system reviews. As part of its maintenance strategy optimization effort, the team used the tool to review approximately 2,700 preventative maintenance (PM) tasks for equipment in these systems. Tool-supplied data then was applied to implement changes to about 1,500 tasks. The cases below highlight a few of the ways that the tool helped the Quad Cities team enhance its maintenance strategies and cut costs. Removal of HVAC system-related tasks saves about $30,000 annually: During a review of PM tasks associated with non-critical, non-safety relatedHVAC systems, the site team used EPRI’s tool to determine that the four-year intervals for inspection and stroke-testing associated with some HVAC system dampers and actuators were not in alignment with the Exelon Corporate PM template’s recommendations for a condition-based maintenance task interval. The tool allowed the team to visualize the costs associated with the inspection and testing tasks and weigh those costs against desired damper/ actuator reliability. After reviewing maintenance records to verify satisfactory equipment reliability to date, the team was able to remove the interval-based tasks and save approximately $30,000 annually across the site’s maintenance department. Extending Motor Control Center inspection intervals saves about $75,000 annually: The data visualization tool helped reveal inconsistent inspection frequencies—varying between six and eight years—in the Motor Control Center (MCC) PM tasks conducted across the site. The team used tool data to review nearly 600 PM tasks and align themwith corporate PM requirements—extending the tasks to an eight- to 12-year frequency based on equipment significance and accessibility, as well as sufficient maintenance records and good performance for each MCC. Aligning these task frequencies resulted in about $75,000 in annualized savings. Moreover, the frequency adjustment 34 NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2018