Cordant™ Machine Health Delivers Prescriptive Insights and nearly 2x ROI
With Cordant™ Machine Health, Solugen has moved from reactive to prescriptive maintenance and avoided more than 100 hours in downtime.
The Challenge: Balancing Maintenance Costs and Process Stability for a Startup
As a start-up, Solugen had variance in process stability due to unknown factors. Across eight days in the months preceding the machine health deployment, there was 400% variance in the company’s average hourly product rate The impacts were significant, and Solugen needed a standard maintenance approach that would set it up to produce and grow more efficiently.
The company sought a partner who understood its challenges and could help to drive deployment and adoption.
The Solution: Prescriptive diagnostics Underpinned by Purpose-Built AI
Solugen partnered with Baker Hughes’ Customer Success team to deploy machine health capabilities from Cordant™ Asset Health. The solution's simple architecture—consisting of a sensor, gateway, and cloud-based platform for monitoring and analytics—allowed for quick and scalable implementation.
Solugen further harnessed the Customer Success team’s deep domain expertise to optimize its maintenance strategies and process.
Cordant™ Machine Health uses purpose-built AI to analyze millions of condition monitoring sensor outputs 24/7 to identify patterns and detect any early signs of degradation. The solution also alerts Solugen’s team well in advance of failure, diagnosing root causes, and prescribing fixes.
Initially deployed to 15 machines, the solution has been extended to monitor 27. These include pumps, fans, blowers, compressors, and gearboxes.
Solugen has harnessed the Customer Success team’s support to scale its deployment and has also leaned on the team’s deep domain expertise to optimize its maintenance strategies and process.
“Immediately following our installation of the Cordant™ Machine Health solution, it helped us avoid six hours of downtime and approximately $6,000 of repair costs on just one spherical pump. It was the start of what machine health is able to do for us as our AI partner in improving the health of our assets,” said Paul Neumann, Maintenance & Reliability Director, Solugen.
The Result: Significant Savings and Improved Reliability
In the first two years of implementation, Cordant™ has helped Solugen avoid 122 hours of downtime and achieve over $111.3K in cost savings. These savings represent a 2x return on investment and include avoidance of costs associated with downtime, labor, parts, and waste.
"Machine Health has helped us delay hiring a full-time reliability & maintenance specialist—as a start-up this has been vital for us,” said Caitlin Molloy, VP of Manufacturing, Solugen.
Scaling Success: New Plant to Adopt Cordant™ Machine Health Monitoring from the Start
Based on their success with Cordant machine health at their Houston startup facility, Solugen has embarked on the construction of a new plant. Recognizing the value and ROI from its deployment, it is collaborating with Baker Hughes’ Customer Success team and plans to deploy Cordant™ Machine Health from the beginning. The simple architecture of the solution will support rapid deployment and time to value.