ABB India, a provider of electrification and automation solutions, has extended its service agreement with Ruchira Papers for its Motion OneCare solutions. Ruchira Papers manufactures printing, writing, and kraft paper from agricultural waste at its mill in Himachal Pradesh.
ABB has taken complete accountability for the maintenance of the paper mill’s drives by providing a combination of services that significantly increased uptime and reduced production losses for the customer, the company said.
Looking to improve uptime and cut production losses, Ruchira entered into an ABB Motion OneCare service agreement two years ago, where ABB took full responsibility for servicing around 55 ABB drives from all life-cycle stages.
The ABB Motion OneCare agreement was customized to Ruchira Papers’ needs, and it included preventive maintenance, on-site support during interruptions, technical support via remote visual guidance, spare parts inventory management, reconditioning, and modernization services or replacement.
“ABB provides timely, high-quality service under our agreement and has contributed to improved performance and increased revenues. We value their expertise and technology, so we have decided to extend our collaboration for at least three more years,” says Sandeep Kalsi, general manager of the electrical department at Ruchira Papers.
“Ruchira’s confidence in our ABB Motion OneCare contract was reinforced by the 13% increase in uptime. Our agreement provides greater value because it is having a 360-degree and comprehensive view of services to the customer. The trust Ruchira papers placed in our agreement strengthens our strategy to serve the expanding paper market,” said Amit B Gupta, president, Motion Services, ABB India.
In the two years since the agreement came into effect, uptime has already risen to 94.8%, an increase of almost 13%, ABB said. The goal is to continuously increase uptime while gradually modernizing drives that are nearing the end of their life cycle.
By 2021, the company was facing increasing downtime and production loss due to the lack of a solid drive maintenance strategy. Local non-ABB service suppliers were servicing failing drives, but the customer was looking for better ways to improve the reliability of their drive-controlled applications as they were experiencing around 4-5 unplanned downtimes per year.
Considering that in the paper manufacturing industry, the average cost of unplanned downtime on a paper machine can be very high. The application’s uptime and quick response, when something is not working properly, is critical.
