ABB in South Africa has completed a $2,1 million project to supply an enterprise and asset management (EAM) system to 11 of Anglo American’s coalmine sites. The order was booked in May 2015 and the project completed in December 2015.
ABB supplied its latest ABB Ellipse EAM Version 6.3.3 which provides Anglo American with an enterprise-wide solution for finance, supply chain, work scheduling and engineering for its coalmine business. The Ellipse software is an upgrade on the previous Version 5 system and end-of-life hardware, which had served the operations for the past 12 years.
Andy Ives, senior practice director, Enterprise Software, part of ABB South Africa’s Power Grids Division, says ABB Ellipse was built for asset-intensive operations such as mining. The system benefits plants through increased uptime and lower operational costs.
“The ABB Ellipse system allows users to plan maintenance because it shows how plant assets and equipment are performing, including trends over time,” says Ives. “It saves asset-intensive plants money in that they can effectively manage resources and in so doing reduce unplanned outages.”
Lukas van Kasterop, application delivery manager at Anglo American says, “The project went smoothly from start to finish. This was a result of the right level of management being applied from both customer and supplier, mixed with the expert technical skills that ABB provided. ABB supported us well in achieving our objectives in upgrading our Ellipse system as well as implementing work management. With work management implemented it makes our ERP an effective tool for scheduling and planning maintenance going forward.”
The Ellipse system provides for plant-wide maintenance and includes an equipment register, stores/inventories functionality and a financial component, all of which support planned maintenance. Asset-intensive industries that use the ABB Ellipse suite of EAM software include mining, utilities, defence, rail, petrochemicals, pulp and paper, steel, telecommunications and renewable energy producers.
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