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Industry solutions:
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Refrigeration
Amulet is used on a global basis in the supermarket refrigeration
industry. Supermarket companies operate in a highly competitive
and highly regulated market. Margins are tight and competition for
customers is fierce. Refrigeration equipment, particularly for the
rapidly growing chilled foods market, is expensive to operate and
maintain. Energy consumption and equipment failure are highly correlated
with weather patterns particularly temperature and humidity.
In the past supermarket chains accepted that the cost for high
customer throughput and compliance with food safety regulations
were part of doing business. Now however, as competition is reducing
margins they need to reduce the cost of doing business. For many
supermarkets around the world Amulet is a key tool in reducing costs
whilst maintaining regulatory compliance. This is achieved by reducing
maintenance costs, improving energy efficiency and determining life
cycle costs for refrigeration assets leading to long term savings
through improved equipment choice.
Amulet is enabling the supermarket service contractors from call
centres around the world to provide a Condition Based Maintenance
and maintenance management service to the retail outlets. The service
contractor uses Amulet to collect output data from the refrigeration
control systems and monitor “out of parameter” conditions.
The engineer receiving the service call is able to interpret the
alarm call and decide whether an engineer should be despatched and
with which parts, or whether the condition can be addressed with
operational changes by the local store management. In this way the
number, and cost, of site visits is significantly reduced as is
the total down time for units whilst maintaining food safety standards.
The output data is also interpreted to improve other costs such
as:
- Energy consumption
- Deteriorating performance, predicting failure and avoiding
emergency call outs
- Mean Time Between Failure on components leading to improved
component selection
- Variations from “best practice” by operational
management
- Enforcing warranty claims
- Improving staff training
- Reduced total cost of ownership of individual manufacturers
equipment
- Asset management replacement plan based on condition not age
The service contractor achieves a competitive advantage by delivering:
- Reduced Down Time (or maximised ‘up time’)
- Increased first time fix rate through dissemination of information
to the engineers
- Faster and more efficient service
- Lower overall cost of ownership
- Greater confidence in maintenance staff
- KPI information on plant and equipment
- Benchmarking between individual stores
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