Signs Your In-House Team Needs Help with Operating Equipment Failures

Equipment failures aren't just inconveniences, they're profit killers. When a high-pressure feedwater pump cavitates for the third time in four months, the entire operation grinds to a halt. If your or your customer's in-house team is trapped in an endless loop of temporary fixes, it’s time to bring in an external engineer specialized in fluid systems!

The Hidden Toll of Repeat Issues

Legacy plants, with their aging infrastructure, amplify the agony. A single repeat failure, say recurring pump cavitation, can cascade into multi-day outages. Depending on the size and scale of an operating plant, a single day of downtime can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to in the millions. For example, a 1 MW power plant in Washington state misses out on $2,300 per day of revenue. That doesn't include the cost of labor and replacement parts.

The pain compounds beyond dollars: employee burnout from stress and overtime, regulatory scrutiny is increased if safety systems are faltering, and customer trust erodes when delivery promises are not met. In-house teams, stretched thin across maintenance, upgrades, and emergencies, often chase symptoms rather than causes, perpetuating this loop.

Why Classic Approaches Fall Short in Fluid Systems

Traditional approaches may seem logical on the surface.

• Reactive maintenance keeps costs low initially by responding to the problem when it occurs, but it ignores cause and after the third or fourth time has become an expensive way to fix a symptom.

• Preventive strategies, like scheduled overhauls, fare better but waste resources on inspecting or replacing good components. This also takes time, the most valuable resource of all.

• Even condition-based monitoring, using sensors for early warnings, stumbles when data to be collected is not selected properly, or those interpreting the data are not able to pick up the patterns of a failure in the works.

The Solvify Advantage

Equipment manufacturers and distributors want to help resolve these issues, but they are often limited in the help they can provide. In some cases they can only offer equipment replacement as they are unable to look at the system comprehensively. Big engineering firms have the expertise but cost $2,000+ per day, and may not show interest in projects of this scope.

If a facility is small- to mid-sized, it may appear to make more financial sense to take the classic reactive approach, especially if the true cost of the failures are not captured. What facility managers see is the PO for replacement parts, say new bearings, and OEM services cross their desks. What is hidden in plain site is the cost of labor and the cost of lost uptime. A simple bearing replacement could cost an estimated $80,000 (small power plant) to $2.4 million (small refinery) with 20% of this being "hidden" costs.

Solvify is tailored to projects of this size. We provide fast service and an outside perspective with over 7 years of mechanical engineering experience in the operations and thermal hydraulic manufacturing sectors. What does our service look like?

1. Obtain operational data and history surrounding the failure. This could be in the form of a virtual meeting, scoping the problem out and discussing the failure as well as related and relevant systems. This approach can be fast and effective, but for unique or complex issues, an in-person evaluation will be performed where a qualified engineer walks the plant, speaking with operators and staff to understand the problem.

2. Perform a formal root cause investigation. We look at the system comprehensively, reach out to the equipment manufacturer, and perform engineering analysis as needed to identify the root cause of the repeated failures.

3. Recommend a fix. The root cause is provided to the facility in the form of an easy-to-understand, straightforward-to-implement report.

This means actions can be taken now to prevent another expensive failure. At just over $1,000 for a full day's work, Solvify costs significantly less. Our services are easily justified when compared to the expense of repeated equipment replacement and downtime.

Reach out or refer us to your operations clients today!