OREANDA-NEWS. June 15, 2011. Tata Power, India’s largest integrated private power utility announced the commencement of Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) process at its Haldia plant thereby enabling the enhancement of the existing Plant Load Factor of the Haldia generation units.

CBM has been adopted / implemented post a detailed study and analysis of the existing preventive maintenance practiced at the plant. Condition Based Maintenance is a predictive maintenance technique to continuously monitor and diagnose the equipment health/ condition, thus ensuring zero downtime due to equipment failures and thereby increasing the operational efficiency.

Speaking on the initiative, Mr. Vijayant Ranjan, Station Manager, Haldia Power Plant, said, “We strongly believe that continuous self diagnostic and optimization of processes are the first step towards operational excellence. Implementation of just-in-time maintenance, CBM, is one of the many small initiatives undertaken by the division to enhance our operational efficiency. “

The CBM schedule for the Tata Power Haldia division has been rolled out and the feedback will be registered on a quarterly basis. The advantages of implementing CBM are:  

Early identification of problems and immediate rectification

Cost effective, appropriate and relevant maintenance work of the equipment

Traditionally, the industry practice has been based on institutionalized Preventive Maintenance (PM) where maintenance work is carried out as per the OEM recommendations and schedules. Since, Preventive Maintenance is time-based and studies have revealed that most of the equipment failures are not related to the number of hours they were operated, Tata Power has deployed the CBM process at Haldia to enable predictable model of maintenance thereby reiterating its efforts to implement new technologies and process to enhance operational efficiency at regular intervals.