Photo courtesy of CPM|Crown
CPM|Crown, headquartered in Minneapolis, has expanded its Lifecycle360 offerings to include Plant Operations, expanding its suite of support services to eight offerings that help oilseed, renewable fuels and specialty processing companies streamline and optimize the lifecycle of their facilities from pre-engineering to long-term maintenance needs.
Plant Operations and all other Lifecycle360 support services—Crown’s Innovation Center; Pre-Engineering; Construction Support; Automation, Maintenance Support, Training; and Optimization—are available to customers around the world.
The Plant Operations service is designed for clients seeking to enhance all facets of their operations, from the plant itself to production processes, equipment and employees. Plant Operations engages Crown’s mechanical, process and automation experts to look holistically at the customer’s full facility and team to help identify bottlenecks and improvement opportunities in technologies, training and other areas that can maximize efficiency, productivity and capacity, according to the company.
Each Plant Operations consultation begins with an on-site assessment, leading to a full analysis with solution recommendations that could include equipment or one or more of the other seven Lifecycle360 support services, the company says. The objective is to help customers accomplish quick and long-term wins for their teams and businesses.
A number of servies are provided through Lifecycle360 Plant Operations:
- preventive maintenance plans;
- shutdown steam purge planning and support;
- debottlenecking;
- process safety management/hazard analysis;
- operating procedures;
- virtual plant monitoring;
- smart operating controls improvements;
- asset integrity/reliability;
- key performance indicator metric evaluation and return on investment;
- project, automation and maintenance planning for day-to-day operations;
- introducing the newest/improved innovations, parts and equipment; and
- risk assessments.
“Through the success of our Lifecycle360 roll-out, we’ve had a chance to interact with customers and take their feedback,” says Kris Knudson, CPM|Crown president. “It became apparent that we had an opportunity to do more for them through our program, so we added Plant Operations.
“Our Plant Ops team is a group of extremely talented individuals who have been doing their work for decades. This experience enables them to listen to the customer’s team and help uncover where they’re needing the most support, whether it be employee training or process optimization.”
Knudson says the Crown Plant Operations team acts as an extra set of eyes for customers.
“During the assessment, we help open up more possibilities and more options that the customer may not have thought about," he says. "I know from my own experience that when you’re in the plant, you’re so focused on day-to-day operations like employee engagement and key metrics that it can be hard to see the big picture, which makes it easy to miss opportunities. Our team comes in and helps broaden that perspective. Their observations, assessment and support really help provide the final solution.”
Additional services will be added to the Lifecycle360 program.
“We’re continuing to work closely with our customers and take market feedback,” Knudson says. “We see more opportunities for other Lifecycle360 programs. In fact, we’re already working on the next releases.”