Remote monitoring services of industrial assets have become quite critical during COVID-19 restrictions, according to Ed J. Boufarah, vice president at Bently Nevada, which delivers condition monitoring and machine asset protection to factories and plants worldwide.
“We have seen the demand for remote services increase steadily, and the value of asset management through our remote services is proven more and more every day,” said Boufarah as the company recently announced plans to open a new remote monitoring centre (RMC) in Singapore.
The new RMC, the first for Bently Nevada in Asia Pacific, aims to provide remote monitoring and diagnostic services for industrial customers in the region. The company targets to offer continuous monitoring of key assets across offshore oil and gas platforms, liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, refineries, petrochemical plants and industrial manufacturing sites.
Leveraging its System 1 Software platform, Bently Nevada’s RMCs bring the expert machinery condition monitoring support that drives condition based maintenance planning. The centres also provide reactive diagnostic support in near real time when a machine or process trip event arises – all without any of the complex logistics delays and costs associated with getting expertise physically on site.
“The journey to enable remote operations relies heavily on a proper IIoT ecosystem that provides the contextualised data necessary to run day to day operations, while still maintaining an optimal asset health management strategy. This is Bently Nevada’s forte,” said Boufarah.
Bently Nevada, a Baker Hughes business, has over 60 years of condition monitoring experience and over 20 years of delivering safe and secure remote machinery monitoring and diagnostic services around the world.
Its global network of RMCs has over 1,500 customer assets at 50 unique customer sites. The company also has over 160 certified machinery diagnostic engineers globally ready to support customers remotely or on-site.
The Singapore RMC expands on Bently Nevada’s significant footprint in the Asia-Pacific region. Bently Nevada has more than 150 employees in Asia-Pacific, supporting 200 key customers with an 80% market share in power and oil and gas facilities.
“We can monitor assets and provide insights to our customers near real-time and in a cost-effective way, while mitigating safety risks associated with physical travel to customer sites,” said KH Hor, Asia-Pacific sales director of Bently Nevada at Baker Hughes.
Specifically, the RMC’s in-house machinery diagnostic engineers will analyse early warning signals for predictive maintenance and provide customers near real-time insights on potential issues and recommended actions. The new centre in Singapore will support services in English, Mandarin and Malay.
“Given the increased demand for remote monitoring and diagnostics for key assets across the energy and industrial sectors, we are excited to launch this centre to better service our customers in the region,” Hor said.
According to Boufarah, remote operations has presented “a step change opportunity in the way our customers manage and operate their critical processes” that both increases productivity and reduces HSE risks simultaneously.
“The new RMC represents our commitment to Singapore and Asia-Pacific,” said Boufarah. “We are investing for growth to support our customers’ digital transformation journeys, to continuously monitor equipment health and provide machinery insights for optimal industrial asset management.”
