Maintenance Information System

Location

North Vancouver, British Columbia

Customer

Nexen Chemicals Canada Ltd.
North Vancouver Chlor-Alkali Plant

Completion Date

October 1999

Background

Nexen Chemicals' North Vancouver plant produces chlorine from a salt brine using an electrolytic reduction process. The production is performed in individual cells that require periodic servicing and repair of components. The safe and efficient operation of the plant requires accurate and reliable tracking of all service and repair work that is performed on the cells and component parts.

A Year 2000 audit of the company's systems and software revealed that the old maintenance information system was not Year 2000 compliant. Universal Dynamics was selected to provide a replacement system that would be fully Year 2000 compliant and incorporate many suggested improvements to make the system easier to use.

Project Scope

Universal Dynamics provided full system services for this project, beginning with detailed requirements specifications, database design and programming, HMI development, installation, testing and user training.

A Windows NT based Microsoft Access SQL database server is the primary component of the system and houses all current installation and past service entries. The application provides a number of screens for displaying information on current cell installations, service history of components, and current status of all components. Other screens allow the maintenance technicians to record cell configurations and component services and repairs. A number of reports present information on cells that are most likely candidates for servicing. The system also provides the ability to import lab measurements for specific cells from Excel spreadsheets.

An important requirement was the need to import information from the old Dbase IV database tables, several times during system testing and commissioning, without data loss.

Benefits from the Project

A major emphasis in the development was to provide a system that would be much easier to use, especially for relief technicians who were only occasional users of the system. A significant amount of resources was invested in detailed requirements analysis based on discussions and walkthroughs of the existing system with users. Several proposals were evaluated with the end users, including the development and review of screen prototypes. This detailed requirements analysis ensured that the final product was very well received by the end users and customer.

The new system provided the following benefits:

• Improve data entry checks to reduce entry errors;
• Simplified navigation to the desired screens;
• Consistent methods for selecting, entering and displaying information;
• Functions defined by user logon privileges.

Highlights

The Maintenance Information System's database is accessible over the plant network via Microsoft ODBC drivers, and is available to system administrator, plant manager and maintenance technician's desktop PCs.

Custom reports can be added as required using Microsoft Access report functions.

Data tracked by system includes:

• cell renewal dates, components in cell, days in service;
• component service dates, types of service;
• components on cells identified as needing repair and reason for repair.

Sample Display Screen: Cell Renewal Management

Sample Display Screen: Cathode List