Exploration • Drilling • Field Services
The total cost of ownership holds the key for sourcing spares. Graham Hill reports.
El costo total de propiedad es la clave para el aprovisionamiento de recambios. Informa Graham Hill.
Die Gesamtbetriebskosten sind bei der Beschaffung von Ersatzteilen entscheidend. Graham Hill berichtet.
Sourcing spares: signed, sealed, delivered …
of spare parts needed to cover all possible breakdown eventualities can be complex and extensive, with high associated costs. For example, it is impractical for a facility to hold in stock every type of carbon and silicon carbide seal ring it could possibly need due to the vast range of sizes, shapes and materials in which these products exist. Te cost of a comprehensive stockholding even in this one area could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds – and can rarely be justified even when set against the costs of downtime while a replacement is sourced.
T
Fig. 1. Silicon carbide seal faces used in industrial mechanical sealing mechanisms.
Condition monitoring Even in the presence of state-of-the-art condition monitoring equipment, with the ability to predict with great accuracy when a component is likely to fail, there will almost inevitably be a loss of production while waiting for the new component to arrive.
he need to keep production in the oil and gas sector up and running is critical given the substantial cost of unanticipated downtime.
However, in most facilities, the number
Facility operators are of course heavily reliant on component suppliers to be able to manufacture a replacement part to order and ship it to wherever in the world it is needed within a few days. For many years, 10 days was the norm, but advances in manufacturing techniques and ever-improving transport links mean that in most instances, a five- day turnaround – or even quicker – from order placement is frequently achievable. Tis is thanks to the introduction of innovative manufacturing processes for the high-temperature sintering of silicon carbide and process enhancements for carbon materials by the leading players in the sector. Typically, component sourcing is handled by in-house procurement departments who will issue a request for quotation via an ERP system, with the decision on which supplier is then engaged often based on who responds quickest and who can cost-effectively deliver the component with the shortest lead time.
What this method of sourcing is not always best-placed to do, however, is to ensure the best value for money in terms of total cost of ownership. Just because a part can be supplied quickly is no guarantee of its quality or service life – and sudden or unanticipated failure of the new part could prove very costly in the long term. However, as with many other areas
of procurement, purchasers are not always given the freedom to use suppliers based on criteria other than purchase cost. Indeed they are often assessed and rewarded solely on their ability to deliver savings on initial purchase cost – with little thought given to the longer-term costs of sourcing decisions made solely on that criterion rather than other elements such as quality, performance and technical support.
Tis means that not only are production facilities not necessarily 10
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