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Maintenance management is the backbone of asset-intensive enterprises. Often, the maintenance software contributes to the most substantial savings, although it also entails the biggest investment in time and money. IFS’ maintenance software is the core of Barsebäck nuclear power station. Barsebäck selected IFS at the beginning of the 1990s because of IFS’ proven background in the asset-intensive industry and because IFS software was specially adapted to maintenance management in nuclear power stations. Change in Ownership
The ownership of Barsebäck changed toward the end of the 1990s. Barsebäck Kraft AB and Ringhals AB merged to form the Ringhals Group, owned by Vattenfall and Sydkraft Kärnkraft. With the change of ownership came requirements concerning how the IT systems should be consolidated and streamlined. Stefan Ernstsson, IT coordinator at Barsebäck since 1994, recalls the events, “We were experienced IFS users so obviously we knew the system well. But this made it difficult for us to judge the right course of action. That’s why we hired an external consultant from WM-data to get an objective assessment of how to optimize our IT systems.”
Objective Assessment
During the spring of 2001, the IT architecture at Ringhals and Barsebäck was the subject of a major investigation. Ringhals had used SAP software since 1999. The external consultant examined two main areas. The first was cost, including initial cost, length of life, conversion costs, and training requirements. The second was the quality of the information in the system. “As it turned out, we had invested so much in our existing system that changing would have been unprofitable. The data conversion would have been very expensive. The investigation also revealed that a change of software would have meant retraining all the personnel that work with IFS Maintenance, about 250-300 people,” adds Stefan Ernstsson.
Easier than Expected
As a result of the investigation, Barsebäck retained IFS Applications for maintenance and document management, in which major investments had been made in building up reliable maintenance data. At the same time, Ringhals decided to implement processes for financials, human resource management, inventory, purchasing, and project management. The project began in the fall of 2001, with IFS and Vattenfall Data responsible for the integration. Stefan Ernstsson comments, “Integration was much easier than we had expected. It took just a couple of months to implement, thanks to the fact that both IFS Applications and SAP R/3 are well suited to integration.” The solution went live in April 2002, after some manual work that involved entering various object IDs and bringing the processes properly up to speed. The personnel were then able to work directly with the interface they were used to, even if the underlying data came from a new system. One example is inventory; maintenance staff at Barsebäck uses IFS’ inventory software, whereas warehouse personnel use SAP’s solution.
Like One System
Three years after the project, integration between the plants is painless. Stefan Ernstsson estimates that about 600,000 mesages have been transmitted between IFS Applications and SAP R/3. Despite the amount of traffic in the system, annual maintenance costs for the integration have been low, and compared with a complete change of system, the investments has already paid for itself.
Barsebäck Shuts down
Barsebäck 1 was shut down on November 30, 1999, and Barsebäck 2 on May 31, 2005, in accordance with an agreement between the Swedish government, Sydkraft, and Vattenfall. The shutdown will not be immediate, however. Operations will continue for at least 1½ years. Subsequently, the headcount will be reduced to about 35–35 employees by 2020, when the plant is designated for demolition. In connection with this, the number of employees will increase by several hundred. Barsebäck Nuclear Power Plant is Sweden’s most southerly, situated on the coast between Malmö and Helsingborg. The plant has two boiling water reactors with a net capacity of 600 MW each. The reactors went into ser vice in 1975 and 1977, respectively. The electricity produced in Barsebäck—2.45 TWh during a normal year—supplies 30 percent of Skåne, the densely populated southernmost province in Sweden, with electricity. With Ringhals AB, Barsebäck constitutes the Ringhals Group. The Group has about 1,400 employees, of which 120 work at Barsebäck Kraft AB. During its best—and final—year in service, 2004, Barsebäck produced 4.7 TWh, a production record at Barsebäck 2.
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