Ever increasing demands from large customers to reduce the cost of Capital Projects must inevitably affect the reliability of the equipment supplied unless new ways are established to determine value for money. Iain Campbell, Industrial Director UK & Ireland for AEG Power Systems, proposes a wider look at the lifetime cost of ownership of mission critical UPS systems as an alternative to simply ‘reducing the bottom line'
Large industrial projects are being restructured in response to the current global downturn, falling oil and gas revenues and increasing operating costs. New projects are seeking ever lower equipment costs to minimise capital expenditure. While large organisations have some control over their own overheads there is a drive to reduce the cost of materials and services they buy and an expectation that their suppliers will respond to these demands. Failure to respond may well put existing and future business in jeopardy with work being deferred or cancelled.
Active cost management is seen as a key step required to maintain this kind of business relationship but does this necessarily mean reducing prices to the point that performance must suffer? Significant emphasis must now be placed on making every euro or pound spent as effective as possible and also ensuring that each supplier involved in a potential project contribute in a positive way to managing costs.
AEG Power Solutions, is an approved supplier to key industries worldwide, including oil and gas, power generation and transmission, transportation and the manufacturing industry, and has received several requests to propose positive solutions to reducing key project costs. From a purely financial perspective it would seem simple to reduce costs by reducing manufacturing labour or material content and passing any savings on to the end customer. In reality the very nature of the ‘mission critical' UPS products and services provided to customers means such cost reduction must not be allowed to compromise the reliability and operational compliance required, limiting this as a viable option.
In common with most major electronics manufacturers AEG employ state of the art designs and manufacturing facilities to ensure highly cost effective manufacturing processes delivering reliable products. AEG designs feature ‘designed-in redundancy' and have minimised the numbers of system elements, rectifier, static bypass and inverter. This not only improves reliability but simplifies service, reduces any potential downtime and overcomes any potential component obsolescence over the lifetime of the UPS.
If the product design and manufacturing processes are already at optimum price-competitiveness, how then to respond to the continuing calls for cost efficiencies? AEG's solution is to provide a complete project management infrastructure to engage with the client at the earliest stage of a new project and create a solution that fully meets the customer's requirements. This ensures the elimination of any wasteful over-specification that will not add to the overall system function or reliability. Further overall cost reductions may be achieved by early consideration of installation scheduling, future service requirements and agreeing on a realistic documentation package which can be produced and distributed electronically, eliminating expensive hard copies, saving many hours of correspondence and producing documentation that adds little or no operational benefit to the customer.
From its foundation in 1887, AEG has pioneered advanced electrical engineering. Today's UPS solutions major on providing technical solutions that deliver significant savings on total lifetime costs by considering all aspects of any initial proposal that have an impact on the total cost to the customer when providing a standby power solution for critical loads.
With a portfolio of AC and DC power solutions up to 8MVA, remote monitoring options for all standard operating systems or custom software if required, AEG aims to deliver commercial UPS systems on short lead times and offer rental of UPS systems for short-term projects or while power infrastructure is being replaced or upgraded.
