Efficiency Under Pressure: Flowtrend ProcessCare's Rapid Response

Situation & Client Information 

One of our distributors, Crane Engineering, reached out to our ProcessCare team about a major beverage manufacturer that needed over 160 valves and 12 pumps maintained over the course of a 5-day shutdown, with the addition of installing new triclamp gaskets on all the equipment.

Initially, an OEM valve manufacturer was set to rebuild 70 valves but had to pull out of the project a week before it was set to begin. As such, the Flowtrend ProcessCare and Crane Engineering teams took on the additional 70 valves for this project for a total of 230 to be rebuilt.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges was finding a group capable of working on outdated equipment from over 10 OEM manufacturers. Although they could have a representative from the OEM come out to rebuild the valves, this would only solve a portion of the issue.

Another portion of the problem is a common issue our team encounters: lack of available onsite maintenance staff. Although the staff onsite had the proper training to repair the valves, they did not have enough people to execute the project within the shutdown period.

The final challenge to this project was obsolete equipment. The client’s facility contained a number of working obsolete equipment within their facility that was no longer supported by the OEM and would need to be replaced.

Solution

In order to complete this project within the 5-day period, Flowtrend ProcessCare added an additional technician to their team for a total of six technicians. Everyone worked alongside a team of three from Crane Engineering. Due to the last-minute cancellation of the OEM, the ProccessCare and Crane team procured some of the needed additional supplies to service all of the valves. With both teams working tirelessly around the clock, we ensured efficient progress and minimization of downtime throughout the project.

Results

Over the next five days, a total of 244 valves were removed from the blend system for cleaning and maintenance. Out of the 244 valves, 15 valves could only be cleaned and inspected due to unavailable or obsolete parts, with some repair kits not arriving in the short window before the job or no check ball found in the check valves.