Flexibility and functionality at heart of enterprise success
Chemical production is highly capital intensive, particularly for CF Industries, one of North America’s largest agricultural fertiliser producers.
The company’s operations are organised into two business segments: the nitrogen fertiliser business and the phosphate fertiliser business. Principal products in the nitrogen fertiliser business are ammonia, urea, and urea ammonium nitrate solution (UAN). The principal products in the phosphate fertiliser business are diammonium phosphate (DAP) and monoammonium phosphate (MAP).
CF Industries recognised early on that structured maintenance could have a significant, positive impact on both operational reliability and its bottom line (Fig.1).
In the 1980s, therefore, the company developed a powerful maintenance planning and tracking application on IBMSystem/36 computers and over time migrated it to the IBMAS400 platform. This system was very effective in helping manage maintenance activities but the investment to keep this homegrown application in pace with CF Industries’ growing business was already well over US$1m. Management reasoned that migration to a Windows-based system would enable them to continue and expand their automation-driven maintenance process improvement, while providing a familiar, easy to navigate desktop environment, and a standard, internet-enabled platform on which to build future enhancements.
So the company set out to find software that would deliver the maintenance planning functionality it had been enjoying in the IBM environment while providing the flexibility it needed for growth. What it found was the Avantis.PRO solution, an enterprise asset management software system from Invensys.
“Because we were already automating maintenance planning in a big way, we had pretty heavy duty requirements. We found that the Avantis software had most of the functionality that we needed and also had the flexibility to develop custom applications and integration to support our business,” said Dave Wiedenfeld, group project leader, IT, of CF Industries’ Louisiana facility.
The company has now standardised on the Avantis.PRO software as its core platform for collection and storage of data on MRO inventory, procurement, and maintenance activities. It also uses Avantis.DSS decision support software to analyse this data for continuous process improvement and has supplemented its system through adoption of standard catalogue descriptions and categories for all MRO items, completed with the help of catalogue management solutions provider IMA. According to the company, the benefits of its new systems include:
- Improved planning and scheduling of maintenance activity.
- Reduced inventory management and purchasing costs.
- More informed strategic negotiations with vendors.
- Preventative maintenance based on maintenance history.
- Platform for continuous process improvement and customisation.
This system is designed to automate maintenance planning and tracking activities on nearly 50000 asset entities, including vessels, pumps, rotating equipment, and electrical motors. It also helps manage and analyse MRO inventory and procurement on more than 60000 inventory items in the four CF Industries manufacturing locations.
“Avantis.DSS software takes data from available Microsoft documents, such as Excel, and makes useful information out if it, which enables us to monitor assets and optimise efficiency,” said Wiedenfeld. “Data analysis that took two weeks is now done in ten minutes, which opens up new doors for improvement.”
In comparison to the investment that the company would have had to make to develop comparable functionality in-house, Wiedenfeld feels that the system has already paid for itself many times over.
The Avantis.DSS software component has proven particularly beneficial in analysing and improving inventory and spending activities (Fig.2). It has contributed to reducing inventory by several million dollars by enabling CF Industries to analyse inventory activity, such as ordering frequency, number of turns, and inventory value.This software also allows CF Industries to aggregate data on spending and readily analyse factors such as number of vendors for common items, price, and delivery performance, which has contributed to savings of approximately US$2million through improved sourcing and contract negotiations.
Simply moving to the Windows environment has been a plus for CF Industries. In addition to enabling a much more intuitive interface for users, it provides a platform on which it can grow and expand. Using the Avantis applications interface, the company has already added a custom workflow automation tool that generates inventory pick lists from work orders and purchase requisitions. It has also added a B2B vendor portal, which minimises email, fax, or mail of purchase orders and other communications with vendors. The company also has plans for continued innovation and expansion across the business.
