A Fortune-500 metals conglomerate operating three alumina refineries and their captive power plants—high-temperature, 24 × 7 operations where every minute of downtime hits production targets and energy efficiency KPIs.
Challenge
Real-World Impact
Disconnected CMMS Logs
Maintenance history scattered across spreadsheets, legacy CMMS, and paper binders—making root-cause analysis nearly impossible.
High Unplanned Downtime
Critical equipment (kilns, pumps, gas turbines) suffered unexpected failures, raising overtime bills and safety risks.
Manual Report Preparation
Compliance teams spent weeks compiling inspection evidence for ISO 55001, ISO 45001, and internal audits.
Lack of Asset Visibility
No single dashboard showed asset health, backlog trends, or risk hotspots across all three plants.
Pillar
Key Components
Asset IQ Platform
Multi-tenant SaaS, modular micro-services architecture.
QR / NFC Tagging
22,000 assets encoded with unique IDs—printed on high-temperature-rated tags.
Guided Mobile Inspections
Role-based checklists with photo capture, anomaly thresholds, and offline sync for remote areas inside the refinery.
Predictive Analytics Engine
Machine-learning models detect trends (vibration, temperature, pressure) and flag impending failures.
One-Click Audit Exports
Generates ISO, OSHA, and corporate templates—complete with digital signatures and time-stamped evidence.
REST / OData Integrations
Bi-directional sync with SAP PM and the legacy CMMS; data pushed to Power BI for executive dashboards.
Phase
Duration
Milestones
Asset Master Clean-Up
3 weeks
Deduplicated 28 k+ asset records, validated hierarchies, mapped location codes.
Tagging & Baseline Surveys
6 weeks
Field teams tagged equipment, uploaded photos, and captured first-run condition readings.
Mobile Pilot
4 weeks
25 inspectors across one refinery; iterative tweaks to checklists and anomaly thresholds.
Full Roll-Out
5 weeks
All three plants live; integration to SAP and CMMS activated; user training completed.
Over a 12-month post-deployment benchmark across all refineries and power units, the system showed strong results. Unplanned downtime dropped significantly, falling from an average of 24.5 hours per month to just 14.7 hours—a 40% reduction that directly improved reliability and productivity.
The time spent on report preparation also improved dramatically. What previously required about 50 person-days per year was reduced to only 20 person-days, saving teams 60% of their effort and freeing them to focus on higher-value tasks.
For compliance, the audit preparation cycle was shortened from 11 days to just 6, a 45% improvement. This made audits smoother, faster, and far less resource-intensive.
Finally, data accuracy in work orders saw a major boost. Accuracy levels rose from around 70% to over 98%, a 28-point improvement. This ensured that decisions were based on reliable, high-quality data, strengthening both operations and compliance confidence.
Success Factor
Detail
Field-First Design
Inspectors scan a tag, the app surfaces only the relevant checkpoints—no scrolling through irrelevant fields.
Offline Capability
Refinery dead-zones no longer block data capture; sync occurs automatically once connectivity returns.
Predictive Alerts
ML models flag anomalies (e.g., bearing temperature drift) 7–10 days before critical thresholds—allowing planned shutdowns.
Tight ERP Links
Work orders are auto-generated in SAP PM, eliminating double entry and ensuring bill-of-materials accuracy.
Instant Evidence Packs
One click bundles photos, signatures, and checklist results into auditor-ready PDFs.
“Asset IQ has turned maintenance into a science. We now see failure trends before they bite and walk into audits with confidence—all from a single dashboard.”
— Head of Reliability Engineering
AI-Driven Spare-Parts Forecasting – Linking failure probability to inventory planning to cut carrying costs.
