Business Impact Summary
Managing standard plant outages, inventory and equipment had been a time-intensive and expensive process for Loy Yang, a low-cost power provider to the Eastern Australia region. To improve power plant management and mine operations, the company selected an enterprise asset management (EAM) solution from Ventyx, which has helped Loy Yang achieve measurable results that have improved their financial performance.
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The Company
Located within the heart of the Latrobe Valley, 165 kilometers east of Melbourne, Loy Yang Power is Victoria's single largest energy producer and is a reliable and efficient energy source for consumers right across south eastern Australia.
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The Challenge
Loy Yang is a low-cost power provider to the Eastern Australia region, with four 560 MW units and an Open Cut Mine to mouth setup (the mine also supplies coal to two other power stations). Managing standard plant outages, inventory and equipment had been a time intensive and expensive process. This was the original catalyst for Loy Yang's search for an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system to improve power plant management and mine operations.
In addition, Loy Yang had many different systems that were stand alone and did not work well with one another if at all. Loy Yang management saw a clear opportunity to improve its overall operations in four key areas:
- Reduce the number of current systems in use
- Reduce overall operating costs
- Increase plant uptime
- Improve mine operations
These key strategies posed a challenge, in large part due to the disparate legacy IT systems.
The Business Need
To deliver on the executive vision of Loy Yang management, a team narrowed down their search to three EAM vendors that could handle the asset management of the power stations and mine. The business need required that the chosen vendor would be able to reduce the number of IT systems, reduce overall operating costs and increase plant uptime.
Diving even deeper into the selection process it was also decided that the EAM system of record should be able to provide information about spare equipment/parts not readily available, hidden inventory and provide ample functionality around contract management complete with historical data to provide additional insight.
Managing costs and inventory was an area of improvement that management could quantify.
Experience showed that a 20% overrun in the cost/time of a standard unit outage cost approx $1 million Australian dollars per day in lost revenue. With the largest maintenance outage costing approx $64 million (45 days) a cost overrun could end up costing $12 million. Management also understood that planning for outages occurred two years in advance and required twelve people.
The selection committee defined the following project goals:
- Get an accurate report on real-time costs
- Reduce the total number of systems
- Reduce workload and headcount
- Improved plant availability
- Increase plant uptime
- Reduce plant overruns
- Implement a system that can handle commodities, mines, and power
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The Solution
After an extensive evaluation, Loy Yang selected Ventyx due to the depth of its solution for power generation and the ability to handle both the mine and the power generation environments.
Loy Yang has utilized an enterprise asset management solution from Ventyx for over 13 years, including the most recent version of Ventyx Asset Suite. As a result, Loy Yang continues to achieve measurable results that have improved their financial performance.
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