Case Study: Major Chemical Manufacturing Company eliminates chronic coalescer vessel failures and saves $650K/year with GE Digital's Asset Answers

Performance Benchmarking Eliminates Chronic Coalescer Vessel Failures

Major Chemical Manufacturing Company was suffering chronic coalescer pressure vessel failures — 116 failures in 2011–2012 that cost about $300,000 to replace plugging filter elements and a history of poor MTBF that drove millions in maintenance and production losses. To tackle this, the company engaged GE Digital and deployed Asset Answers, the asset-level benchmarking capability within GE Digital’s Machine & Equipment Health solution (part of the Asset Performance Management suite).

Using GE Digital’s Asset Answers to benchmark performance against peers, the company pinpointed large MTBF gaps by equipment type, conducted a PROACT root-cause analysis that identified emulsion buildup on filters, and installed a high‑pressure backwash system. GE Digital’s analysis showed pre-change costs of ~$20,000/month in maintenance and ~$32,000/month in lost production; after a $200,000 investment maintenance dropped to ~$500/month with no production losses predicted, eliminating chronic failures and delivering roughly $250,000/year in maintenance savings plus $400,000/year in avoided production losses.