A straightforward maintenance strategy

yields improved plant performance

Moving from reactive to preventive maintenance helps Monsanto improve
output and reduce costs at its Muscatine plant. Smart field devices and
control valve positioners provide critical diagnostic data to reliability
engineers, guiding their efforts.
Peter Welander
05/04/2013

In many situations, a straightforward and consistently applied maintenance strategy can have
results that attract positive attention as production and plant availability increase while
maintenance costs decrease. Such is the case at Monsantos Muscatine manufacturing
facility. The combination of technical solutions with corresponding work processes has had
measurable positive results and earned the facility the 2012 HART Plant of the Year Award.
The Monsanto Muscatine facility is located in southeast Iowa along the Mississippi River. It
manufactures Roundup herbicide along with acetanilide select chemistry products, including
Harness Xtra, Degree Xtra, and Warrant. The facility covers 150 acres and employs around
450 individuals to operate and manage eight individual process units. These include waste
treatment and plant utilities along with the product manufacturing process areas. The majority
of the plant operates continuously, year-round, and the oldest parts of the facility date back
50 years.
An inherited maintenance platform
The processing units are controlled by a mix of Emerson
DeltaV and Provox DCS (distributed control system)
platforms tied to more than 3,200 instrument assets,
including transmitters and control valve positioners. Of this
total installed base, there are currently over 600 HART and
125 Foundation fieldbus instruments within the facilities
AMS Intelligent Device Manager. The outstanding
instruments not yet in the AMS Intelligent Device Manager
are in large part either not terminated to smart I/O or are
simply non-smart devices. One of the pivotal changes in
Muscatines operation happened in 2006 when Joel Holmes,
site electrical reliability engineer, received a standalone
Emerson AMS unit from another Monsanto plant. Having
access to that unit enabled him to explore some of the
capabilities of a more sophisticated maintenance strategy
using diagnostic information gathered from field devices
using HART Communication and Foundation fieldbus
protocols.

Given the facilitys extensive population of maintenanceintensive valves and instrumentation, this was an area where
Holmes felt that improvements in reliability would have the
largest impact on overall plant performance. Part of the
process of integrating his new maintenance tools with the
work processes involved assigning a criticality value to the
instrument assets in each process unit. Those that could
impede production were given the highest priority for
monitoring.
As Holmes described the process, We utilize an A, B, or C
letter designation to denote asset criticality. The highest
criticality ranking is an A, with the lowest criticality ranking
being a C. Keep in mind, A-ranked critical devices will
receive the most attention since their
performance is crucial to the on-stream time
of the production system whereas C-ranked
devices may, in many cases, be allowed to
run till failure since their impact to the
production system is minimal or they have
in-line spares.
As Monsanto gained experience with AMS,
use within the plant became more
sophisticated with improvements in overall
effectiveness. The Alert Monitor became the primary predictive tool integrating the plants
asset criticality measure with the Device Manager. The respective device group assignment in
turn directly impacts its polling rate, or the frequency at which the Alert Monitor extracts the
devices status, health, and diagnostic information from the field.
Over time, Holmes created three groups of devices: transmitters, control valves, and vapor
sensors. This helped balance the loading of the Alert Monitor since having too many devices
poll at the same frequency overloaded the system, resulting in extremely slow update rates or
no response at all. Each device group has a set series of polling rate values dependent upon its
criticality ranking.
Working in a legacy environment
While some of the process units have relatively new control systems with HART-enabled
I/O, there are other areas where the system is still plain analog. These will be upgraded as the
plant moves through a series of migrations to DeltaV control systems with CHARMS I/O, but
in some areas that is still years away. The work-around that the plant has developed to gather
diagnostic information involves either WirelessHART THUM communication for critical
tags, or HART/Foundation fieldbus handheld communicators for devices that require less
frequent monitoring.
The WirelessHART deployment is growing with about 25 devices currently in operation.
Holmes expects that number to grow, and each process unit will soon have its own wireless
gateway.

A case in point
As the Glyphosate Technicals unit was
anticipating a scheduled shutdown for
catalyst regeneration, Holmes and his team
addressed a planned and scheduled
deficiency work order with a two-inch
eccentric ball control valve that had been identified as suspect through a prior control valve
reliability PM route. The AMS Intelligent Device Manager along with its ValveLink SnapOn application had measured increasing friction as the valve moved through its full span of
travel. This indicator suggested a problem was developing and triggered a failure when
performing the diagnostic scans on the control valve assembly. While the valve was not
exhibiting any issues that would be visible to the operators, the valve signature indicated that
the amount of force required to open and close the valve had increased substantially. It was
still able to perform its control function for
the moment, but comparisons with historical
signatures revealed that a more drastic
situation was developing.

Holmes recommended that the electrical

reliability technicians change out the valve
during the outage; therefore, the reliability
technicians proceeded to remove it from
service during that time. When they pulled the valve body free from the flanges, they found a
1/4 x 4 in. bolt stuck in the valve that had apparently come off one of the clamps holding a
filter element designed to capture the catalyst. It had been carried down the pipe by the
flowing process stream. Had that bolt remained in the valve, at some point it could have
initiated flow control issues up to and including the valve refusing to close which would have
caused additional problems.

The bolt had damaged the valve's ceramic

plug and seat, so once the valve body was
removed and separated from the actuator, it
was sent out for rebuilding. A new valve
body was mounted on the actuator in the
shop. Prior to reinstalling the assembly, it
was calibrated and then tested with the use
of the ValveLink Snap-On application to
make sure the valve signature and additional
diagnostic scans indicated normal operating parameters using HART. All scans including the
valve signature were recorded in AMS so that results can be compared to future analysis in
trending for degradation. When approved, the valve was returned to service without delaying
the scheduled startup of the process unit.
Changing plant mindset

As workflow processes change, so do

individuals mindsets. The reliability team
members have enjoyed seeing some of the
traditional barriers within the company
between operations and maintenance
crumble as a growing sense of common
purpose and cooperation develops.
Holmes described one of the changes:
Along with the reliability programs and
some of the efforts related to how we
monitor and look at our deficiency backlog, were also getting into AEM (asset effectiveness
management). This method looks at the process units, what they have to make per our sales,
and tracks their process downtime. We want to make sure that were not only looking at it
from a predictive and preventive standpoint to see whats causing downtime, but to also have
those operating units telling us what their biggest pains are. In the past, maintenance was
addressing things that they were seeing failing and having problems, but it wasnt always the
same issues or biggest problems that the process units felt they had. So there was a kind of
disconnect there. With us transitioning and now focusing on AEM, in addition to all of our
predictive and preventive efforts, were getting a better grasp on what needs to be addressed
and handled to ensure that we have the manufacturing availability we need.
Electrical reliability technician, Mike Chaney, has also seen positive effects as he works with
operators. Being in a sold-out state as we are, we get a two day window in some cases to
find problems and get them fixed within that window, he said. If we can avoid downtime
down the roadthats big. Causing downtime right now is not a good thing. So if we can
prevent that from happening, it saves the plant lots of money in the long run. Production sees
what were finding using this technology. So when we say something to them, theyre not so
quick to respond, We arent going to do that. Theyre more willing to say, Well get this
valve ready for you to pull out and then see what youve got. They know were saving them
headaches. If we can keep things running, it makes their day nicer.
Measuring progress
When this whole program began, Holmes said that they had no good way to distinguish,
track, or analyze reliability work performed in the plant. To remedy that, Monsanto created
order codes to work within the SAP CMMS. In order to track labor and material costs to
specific equipment, individual deficiency notifications are entered from any findings arising
from the facilities preventive (PM) or predictive (PdM) maintenance reliability programs.
Each issue identified during PM routes or PdM triggers will have a separate deficiency
notification / work order created. This allows for predictive vs. reactive work cost analysis to
be performed and KPIs to be generated and tracked.
The code analysis data helps quantify planned versus reactive work. In turn, the system
generates bad actor lists and provides for a dollar figure that indicates how much of a cost
avoidance reliability program initiatives are providing. An average of 12 AMS deficiency
orders are entered each month. With a cost avoidance of over $1,600 per work order, it
correlates to over $200,000 saved in time and materials annually. However, Holmes points
out that this is strictly an out-of-pocket cost avoidance savings and does not reflect increased
income from gains in plant manufacturing availability.

One big effective family

There is more work to do within the plant, but Holmes and his plant management see the
direction clearly. The big hurdle that we have is that operations doesnt always know what
the reliability programs are doing, he said. So theres a constant effort to share and
communicate, not only with production but our other maintenance workforce. We continue to
share what these guys are doing, their successes, findings, and training. Thats imperative as
we try and grow the relationship. Its very apparent to our upper management, so its one of
our goals to keep that communication going to tie the three together: maintenance,
production, and reliability as one big family.
Key concepts

The technical elements of an effective maintenance program are not complicated.

Procedural and cultural changes within a plant are critical to ongoing maintenance
management success.
Many tools are available to support such programs, they are not difficult to
implement, and the payoff can be huge.

HART Plant of the Year AwardCelebrating ingenuity and innovation

The HART Plant of the Year
Award is presented annually
by the HART
Communication Foundation
to recognize people,
companies, and plant sites
around the world for their
ingenuity and innovation in
applying and using HART
Communication. A HART
Plant of the Year takes the
capabilities of HART
instruments beyond
configuration and
calibration, or uses real-time
diagnostics and process
variables of HART-enabled
devices integrated with its
control, information, and
safety systems.