Cosmo Oil Company unlocks up to $8.2M in savings

Executive Summary

Cosmo Oil Company, one of Japan's largest oil refineries, partnered with Baker Hughes to address challenges with high maintenance costs and uncertainty over the effectiveness of its OEM-prescribed, time-based maintenance strategies. The project applied a reliability centered maintenance (RCM) approach to optimize maintenance for critical reciprocating and centrifugal compressors. 

Leveraging Baker Hughes’ domain expertise and Cordant™ Asset Strategy, the project provided Cosmo with justified maintenance strategies anticipated to deliver up to $8.2M USD in savings over a ten-year period. The project also provided a clear, data-driven path for condition monitoring investments. The success of this initiative has established a new standard for reliability at Cosmo and laid the groundwork for a broader rollout across other company sites.

Challenge 

Cosmo faced pressure to enhance operational efficiency and reduce costs resulting from unexpected equipment failures and routine maintenance activities. The company lacked confidence in its existing maintenance schedules, which were based heavily on OEM-prescribed intervals rather than real-world performance or asset condition. This created the risk of unnecessary maintenance and missed failures.

Cosmo sought to transition from time-based maintenance to risk-based maintenance. This required the company to also address the lack of adequate online instrumentation and condition monitoring for critical compressors.

Solution 

Cosmo partnered with Baker Hughes to identify and implement cost-optimized maintenance strategies for its compressors and evaluate the best approach and benefits for implementing new condition monitoring sensors. The company engaged Baker Hughes based on its decades of experience in RCM, domain expertise in vibration analysis, and ability to apply simulation-based RCM using Cordant™ Asset Strategy.

The project followed a structured process, starting with data gathering and analysis to establish a baseline data model. Using Cordant™ Asset Strategy, Baker Hughes built validated failure mode models for the compressors and analyzed four scenarios: run-to-failure, the current maintenance strategy, an optimized maintenance strategy, and an optimized strategy with sensors.  

“The analysis made it easy to understand the impact and ROI of different maintenance approaches and quantify the effectiveness of our efforts compared to run to failure,” said Kiyohide Yoshii, HQ Manager, Mechanical Reliability Department. 

Based on the analysis, Cosmo will optimize strategies by eliminating non-value-added activities and introducing targeted preventive maintenance inspections. 

The project team also conducted a comprehensive gap analysis, comparing the compressors' existing condition monitoring sensors against the latest industry standards. This analysis demonstrated the significant return on investment achievable by upgrading to a new vibration monitoring system.

To support these outcomes and uplift Cosmo’s reliability capabilities, Baker Hughes also conducted a root cause analysis (RCA) workshop.

Results

Working in partnership with Baker Hughes, Cosmo has elevated its expertise in RCM and is positioned to realize measurable improvements in cost efficiency and reliability. 

The potential cost savings from the project total around $8.2M USD over ten years and include: