How can you integrate your power drive system to maximize the uptime of your process? 

Your  power drive system powering your critical machine, deserves a well-defined system approach for optimum reliability, quality and safety.To maximize uptime, your electrical Power Drive System should consist of the right combination of circuit-breaker, transformer, variable frequency drive (VFD), and AC motor — all precisely matched to your specific application.”

And what can we do for you?

Thanks to more than 25 years of drive application experience, ranging from DC to AC low and medium voltage variable frequency drive vfd and motors, combined with decades of project management, we can advise you independently to ensure your critical machines are driven reliably, efficiently and safely. We can further enable informed decision-making by providing independent advice to maximize the uptime of the drive train of your mission critical machines.
You can go through the clarifications below to define your power drive system wisely or click straight through to your preferred subjects:

• The wheel of… manufacturing an OEE.
• Life-cycle-cost-based-decision
• Mayor interactions of your electrical power drive system
• The basics of reliability, availability and downtime for your MV-drive
• No time to read all this, here is your call to action

As illustrated in the simple diagram above, achieving sufficient profit requires coordinated efforts on multiple fronts.  The video below emphasizes the importance of maximizing production uptime to boost revenue.

Life cycle cost-based decision making is strongly supported by the need to maximize your uptime.

Your mission critical machine deserves a maximum fully productive time. To achieve this, it’s essential to minimize losses wherever possible while closely monitoring key performance indicators such as OEE ( check out this video for the basics on Overall Equipment Effectiveness). Already in the early stage of the project you can have an important impact on the availability, performance and quality losses. It is worthwhile to invest enough research time in the definition phase of the project. Changes during execution along the road will always cost more and will endanger the planning of the project.
Now, about the losses:

• Availability losses include unplanned stops (such as equipment failures and material shortages) and planned stops. When it comes to mission essential systems, downtime is always a major concern. Check the impact of unplanned downtime  in this article with keyfindings from Siemens: “the true cost of downtime 2022.pdf”
• Performance losses cover anything that causes the manufacturing process to run at less than the maximum possible speed.
• Quality losses relate to produced parts that do not meet quality standards.
  Both losses can be countered by ensuring compliance to the specifications and operating the equipment to the specifications.

So how can you reduce downtime?

• Avoid unscheduled downtime (by real time operating data helping you to predict failures).
• Avoid unnecessary preventive maintenance interventions (thanks to full visibility of the health of your assets).
• Maximize the uptime of your critical machine in a safe and efficient way.

Considering all the above, base your project scope requirements and purchasing decisions on life cycle cost—not just on capital cost (CapEx) or schedule constraints. Since most plants operate for several decades, prioritize operating expenses (OpEx) when evaluating long-term value. Investing more in CapEx upfront can significantly reduce your OpEx over time, ultimately improving your plant’s overall economic efficiency. Below, we’ve listed the main factors that determine Life Cycle Cost (LCC):

• Maintenance Intervals: Frequency and duration of required inspections and preventive replacements; whether they cause downtime.
• Service Expertise: Determines if in-house teams can handle maintenance or if expensive manufacturer specialists are needed.
• Maintenance Effort: Time and cost involved (MTTR); ease of component access is key.
• Component Lifetime: Longer-lasting parts (MTBF, conservative design) reduce replacements, costs, and downtime.
• Spare Parts Pricing: Evaluate if parts must be sourced from the manufacturer and their pricing strategy.
• Control Upgrades: Necessary due to fast-evolving control hardware; ensure the vendor supports future upgrades and at what cost.
• Service Support: Check the vendor’s long-term support history and user feedback.
• Request a 5–20 year maintenance agreement to accurately compare the total life cycle cost (LCC) from different manufacturers/solution providers.

To obtain management support for the life cycle cost approach, you will need to collect at least the following data:

• The cost of unavailability per unit of time (€ or $ per minute, hour or day).
• The daily revenue at stake.
• The possible savings over total lifetime of the machine.(efficiency, availability)

The high-priority asset, with its typical machine specifications, should be carefully considered within your production proces. We should also factor in the power drive system, which is after all providing the energy to drive the machine (see diagram on top of this page). For small power drive systems used in critical process equipment, the availability can often be enhanced by a redundant system of variable frequency drive and associated AC-motor. High power applications are often driven by Medium Voltage drives and a complete redundant Medium Voltage variable frequency drive vfd is often economically not viable. By consequence, the reliability and the availability of the MV-vfd will be major priorities for your mission critical machines.

Interactions of the electrical power drive system

For now, let’s not get into typical terms used in reliability such as MBTF, MTTR, availability percentage, yet.
The power drive system is part of the drive trains’ installation as shown on picture on top of this page. The reliability of the power drive system will be the result of multiple important interactions. To maximize uptime, we recommend reviewing the key components listed below, each linked to relevant insights:

• the environmental conditions (see also standards such as IEC 60721-3-3 and IEC 62103)
• the thermal balancing
• the quality of your in- and output power of your drive 
• the correct operation to specification of the combination of your power drive train and the driven machine
• the correct composition of your power drive system fit for your application
• the available support on-site in case of a breakdown
• more important interactions in a checklist?

Some basic reliability definitions and what about your MV-drive?

Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) is defined as the predicted elapsed time between inherent failures of a system during operation (more info in IEC 60050). The definition of MTBF depends on the definition of what is considered a “system failure.” We are interested in those failures that place the system out of service, into a state of repair.  Most critical machines expect to rely on drives for decades. So, a good target for your MTBF is a minimum of 100,000 hours, which is more than 10 years before a predicted failure appears. It can generally be extended by following the manufacturer’s recommended preventive maintenance program and redundancy. The MTBF is typically part of a model that assumes the failed system is immediately repaired (MTTR – Mean Time To Repair) as part of a continuous process.
The Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is the amount of time the component is shut down in order to repair or replace a part. Considering the high cost of downtime, MTTR should be kept as low as possible.
Factors that influence a drive’s MTTR:

• The ease of replacing defect components without the need to disassemble the drive.
• The containment of the fault thanks to the inherent protection of the drive (one failure only; no collateral damage, arc resistent design).
• The available support:
  • Are your technicians with the right expertise to monitor, maintain and repair the drives present on-site?
  • Are the right spare parts to repair the drive available on-site?
  • Can you rely on remote 7/24 expert support from your drive manufacturer?
  • What time is required to get the drive manufacturers’ expert on-site in case of a severe breakdown? (to include in your service level agreements of your maintenance contract)

Availability is the percentage of time when the system is operational.  Availability is determined by the reliability of the system and its recovery time when a failure occurs.  The formula: availability= MTBF/(MTBF +MTTR).
Availability is typically specified in nines notation. For example, 3-nines availability corresponds to 99.9% availability. A 5-nines availability corresponds to 99.999% availability.
Keep in mind that the Mean Time Between Maintenance Actions (MTBMA) will be shorter than the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF). For a drive it makes sense to replace the fans after 5 to 10 years which is generally smaller than the MTBF. This preventive maintenance action can of course be scheduled in the planned maintenance shutdown of the machine, to avoid its impact on the availability during normal operation.

Implementing redundancy significantly improves reliability of your mission critical machine.
Restoring lost redundancy through maintenance is critical for maintaining high availability and has a significant impact on the MTBF and availability of the drive system.

Downtime per year is a more intuitive way of understanding the availability. The table below compares the availability and the corresponding downtime.

We are ready to assist you as subject matter expert combined with the structured approach of decades of project management. All it takes is that you contact us for a free consultation, no strings attached.
Further down the road we can facilitate informed decision-making by offering you our independent advice and support for any of the following tasks:

• Develop the project plan presentation.
• Define and manage the requirements of the power drive system PDS (converter duty transformer, variable frequency drive vfd and AC-motor).
• Evaluate the composition of the power drive system.
• Set-up and coordinate internal and external pre-bid meetings.
• Set-up the invitation to bid with Engineering, Procurement and Contracting companies and/or vendors.
• Assess preferred manufacturers of transformer, inverter and motor.
• Verify the offers and exceptions in regard to your specs of your PDS.
• Help to select the vendor of transformer, variable frequency drive and motor.
• Clarify the order of your PDS.
• Set-up witnessed and non-witnessed Factory Acceptance Tests (FAT) requirements and test plan.
• Define Site Acceptance Tests (SAT) requirements.
• Validate the site acceptance tests for the components of your power drive system PDS on-site.