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SERVICE & SUPPORT


HELPING YOU ‘SKIP THE DRAMA’ Michelle Lea attended the launch of Schneider Electric’s EcoCare in the UK, and heard all about the membership service from David Pownall, Services Vice President, Schneider Electric UK&I, and Chris Haines, Marketing Director - Industry


t’s no secret that industry faces numerous challenges right now, challenges that Schneider Electric aims to help its customers overcome with the launch of EcoCare in the UK. The membership service was introduced at the company’s brand new Experience Centre and Connected Services Hub in Warrington. It will offer customers a dedicated success management team, and access to innovative technologies to enable digital transformation through valuable insights, optimised maintenance, and expert recommendations for enhanced system performance and energy management. David Pownall explained how the EcoCare membership service promises expedited emergency response SLAs and continuous infrastructure monitoring, marking a significant advance in digital energy management and automation services. The end-to-end energy connectivity solution is supported by a dedicated team offering 24/7 customer-site monitoring from the Connected Services Hub in Warrington, and other Connected Services Hubs throughout the world.


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Setting the scene, Pownall outlined the issues customers in industry are facing, challenges that can be overcome through optimum support from a trusted source. These challenges include a widening skills gap, the need to manage costs and drive out waste, and the road to net zero and the importance of sustainability, as resources become more scare and volatile. He said: “The world is electrifying faster than we have ever seen, at the same time is it digitising faster than we have ever seen. Energy stability has never been more uncertain (at least since the end of the Second World War), and we also have an ageing workforce, posing a huge issue. Schneider Electric is trying to bridge those gaps.” He went on to say there was a definite need for more effective maintenance strategies among customers, with some still operating a sub-standard maintenance plan, or still using preventative maintenance methods.


Customers want optimised support, they want reliability and to know their priorities are being met, whether that’s cost management or optimising uptime/productivity. They want to be able to make data-driven decisions, build resilience into their plan, mitigate risk


44 MAY 2024 | PROCESS & CONTROL


and reduce unplanned downtime. He said: “At the same time we are seeing a digital transformation in manufacturing, with AI technology and connected sensors offering the ability to monitor connected critical assets. It is this technology that plays a vital role in Schneider Electric’s EcoCare offering, enabling the prediction of failures before they happen.”


The EcoCare service membership is agile


and flexible enough to meet a customer’s changing needs, offering them the opportunity to:


• Minimise downtime by up to 75% with faster response time to on-site intervention and 24/7 remote monitoring and alarming. • Reduce planned downtime by up to 40% through a condition-based maintenance


Customers want to be able to make data-driven decisions, build resilience into their plan, mitigate risk and reduce downtime


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approach, enabling dynamic maintenance scheduling.


• Extend asset lifecycle and avoid carbon emissions, contributing to an organisation's sustainability goals.


These outcomes will be the result of the


benefits of the EcoCare Services package that provides:


• Dedicated Customer Success Management Team orchestrating remote and on-site experts, ensuring access to industry-leading expertise.


• Faster response time with exclusive spare parts discounts for improved efficiency and reliability.


• Innovative digital technologies to enable digital transformation including gaining valuable insights, optimising maintenance, and receiving expert recommendations for enhanced system performance and energy management.


Pownall says EcoCare membership supports the customer right from day one, enabling the workforce to monitor, optimise and maintain operations, and provides spare


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parts in the right place at the right time, without tying up the balance sheet with unused parts that are just sat on a shelf. So how is EcoCare delivered to the customer?


EcoConsult is the starting point, which establishes where a customer is today, taking in existing infrastructure, critical assets, what’s connected, what isn’t, what’s upgradable, what’s coming to end of life, what’s obsolete, and where the risks are.


The service offering can cover the whole facility, including power, building automation and plant automation. Support is available for both new and existing products and systems, and includes both Schneider Electric and third party products.


Next is EcoFit - which encompasses modernising, upgrading, repairing or remanufacturing assets rather than replacing them, an important aspect of a customer’s net zero journey. The aim is to support customers today, but also help them transition to a more digital, efficient, resilient and sustainable future.


EcoCare membership is visualised via the MySchneider customer portal. This personalised digital portal delivers the services and intelligence to customers. It encompasses all critical assets and equipment, across multiple sites and shows the lifecycle status of connected equipment. This obsolescence status means customers can see exactly which critical assets are coming to the end of their life, which are at risk, which are obsolete, and which are commercialised or current.


When consultants are engaged they will be looking at data through the Connected Services Hub, analysing it and making recommendations. These recommendations are categorised by level of criticality, and are visually colour-coded on the portal. With up to 60% of preventative maintenance said to be unnecessary, connected technologies show the condition of new and existing assets, meaning maintenance can be more targeted and


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