Solutions Podcast Series

Extending the Life of Your Drive Through Modernization Services

November 05, 2021 ABB Motors and Mechanical US Season 1 Episode 13
Solutions Podcast Series
Extending the Life of Your Drive Through Modernization Services
Show Notes Transcript

Drives are absolutely critical in manufacturing, so ensuring a long uninterrupted life is extremely important for users. In this episode of the ABB Solutions Podcast, host Mike Murphy is joined by Jamie Robinson, product marketing manager for ABB Drives Service Modernization, to discuss extending the life of your drive-controlled application.

Modernization Services
ABB Drives Products

To learn more about ABB's Baldor-Reliance motors, please visit baldor.abb.com.

Mike Murphy:

Welcome to the ABB solutions Podcast, where we address challenges faced in our industry. I'm your host, Mike Murphy speaking to you from Greenville, South Carolina. Today we have Jamie Robinson, Product Marketing Manager for ABB Drive Service Modernization. Jamie's here to speak with us on extending the life of your drive controlled application. Welcome, Jamie. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me. It's great having you. All right, drives are absolutely critical in manufacturing. So ensuring a long uninterrupted life is extremely important for users. So Jamie, first, what is modernization? How does that work for Drive Services?

Jamie Robinson:

That's a great question, Mike. I'm gonna drop right in by saying, you know, here's a definition for drive modernization. It's a proactive approach to lifestyle management, offering alternative methods to secure operational continuity and extend the life of your drive system. Retrofits and upgrade solutions for legacy and drive products, including non-ABB drives can potentially reduce or replace a capital expense budget, as well as lower annual repair and maintenance expenses by keeping your existing structure and still having the latest ABB technology, technological innovations inside. By identifying the product and component obsolescence, you can improve usage reliability, performance, and safety with new features from proven technology.

Mike Murphy:

Okay, great. So you spoke about Lifecycle Management. Can you expand on that a bit more? What does that mean? Yeah, absolutely, Mike. So, ABB has developed the product lifecycle management model. And it's aimed at providing proactive service offerings for maximizing products, availability, performance, and reliability. Within that model, there are four phases of the lifecycle. They include active, classic, limited, and obsolete. Within the active and classic, that's like the beginning of a drives lifecycle, right? That's guarantee component support. With the limited obsolete, you're coming towards the middle, and the end of life where you have limited component support. So how we really define those is, in the active phase, we're talking about brand new drives that have been released that are still available for sale, from like new product drives. So, those are fully manufactured; they're actively promoted; they're available to all authorized customers, right, they have full technical support, fully available for all spare parts, right. And maybe they they're available for extended warranties, right. So what happens in the in the phase model is that when we transition over to classic phase, that's basically when the next generation drive comes out. So the day that the new drive is launched, the existing drive will go into what's known as classic stage. And the classic stage is now handled by Drive Service, right. So we maintain the drive from that forward. Typically, we would, we would sell the drive, we would incorporate, be responsible for all the spare parts, and anything associated for that drive, now that's gone into a classic phase. Some of the supporting features, I guess, behind the classic phase are again, you're still gonna have full spare parts availability, there may be an increase in spare parts pricing, because the objective is really to push the new product drive. But we are supporting that drive for at least the next 10 years. There's typically no further enhancements available for the drive. It is what it is, product ownership moves from, like I said, new product drives to Drive Service. Now your contacts won't be taken typically, where you would go to you could still go to your channel partner, where you would drive, purchase a brand new drive, but if you're looking for parts or even the drive itself as from from either repair services or replacement services, whatever, your drives, channel partner now would contact Drive Service or our Customer Service Inside Sales, to be able to acquire any parts pieces for a drive in classic. So, what happens what we really do now is as after the classic goes, let's say about 10 years go by, we've already introduced a new drive, there's potentially maybe even another drive coming out. But at some point in time, we've really run the course of that classic drive; it's been alive for 15-20 years. So, at some point in time parts become available or become not available from say like the vendor, right in this case, it could be us as the manufacturer, but we rely on vendors to supply us with parts and after 20 years technology changes and parts become obsolete and they decide to phase out particular components. You know, new technologies come along; the replacement parts are not the same. So we go into what's known as a limited phase. And in that limited phase that basically you know just due to the nature of not being able to acquire parts, the price of those parts even go up even farther, right? Because they're harder to find maybe, maybe the lead length, lead times are extremely long, and it's not actively promoted anymore. It's basically run its course, you know, hopefully the drive has has been sustainable for the last 20 years, right, and the customer absolutely loves it. But, at this particular time, it's time to really start thinking about what your next product from ABB is going to be. And then of course, lastly, the obsolescence fees. Basically, this is where it's totally withdrawn from sales. You know, if you want to look it up, you might be able to find some legacy information on the product. But at the end of day, there are pretty much no parts available. And it's time really, if you're still in the space and drive is still running, we highly recommend that you move forward and start replacing your drive to the latest and greatest to keep your application going. So, drives modernization, by definition right, drive modernization really begins kind of in the limited phase where the product is no longer actively promoted by the sales force, and it carries through that obsolescence phase, when the drive is no longer manufactured as a complete product. That may change. In some cases, we might have case by case basis where modernization activity may take place as early as a classic phase, which is more prevalent in our medium voltage drives. But in a low voltage and a low voltage scenario, it's typically case by case. But at the end of the day, this is you know, the limited phase is where a customer has a drive that's actively running. And we should be really proactive in identifying what the customer's short term and long term goal is with regards to the application and get them migrated over to the next generation drive. Okay, that was an excellent explanation on the types of phases a drive can be, and I had no idea there was that many places a drive can fall in to. So Jamie, how would a customer know what phase their drive unit is at? Another great question, Mike. So within that phase activity, we at ABB try to do diligence to make sure that we're letting our customers know what what their phase cycle is. Right? So there are multiple ways of just acquiring this information, right, You can always contact your local ABB channel partner, right. Whether that's a distributor, or a systems integrator. You could contact ABB direct through our technical support, just give them a holler at the at the tech support number; let them know what drive product you have, and they'll provide you with the lifecycle report. But, lastly, and most easily, I mean, if you just go to the web, you can pretty much log in and put in, you know, lifecycle of ABB drives and there are all kinds of announcements that are out there, so. But what it really does is it really begins with registering the drive, the expectation is that when a customer acquires an ABB product, what we like to do is we'd like to register the serial number. Once we have that serial number, we put it into a database called Drives, Install Base. And now we have record of that drive. So, moving forward, if we have any service history, or services done on the drive, it becomes a service history, righ; it becomes archived. And we always have that report ready for you to go. So I would highly recommend for all of our customers as we move forward, if you're you know, interested in purchasing an ABB drive that you make sure that you register that product, so that ABB is always on top of writing you with that lifecycle announcement as to what phase your drive is in. So, from there, modernizaton offers several different directions that you could go. There are standard offerings from a modernization standpoint. There's a standard modernization and our engineered activities right or an engineered solutions. So, typically our low voltage AC products like a SAMI Star, an ACB700, both single and multi drives, and our ACS600 multi drive units as well as ACS607 single drive units. These are all drives right now that are legacy ABB products that are available, or retrofit available, and or modernization available using the ACS880 family. We also have a handful of active and I say active they're both active and classic as medium voltage products like an ACS1000, ACS6000, or an LCI. These drives are still produced, manufactured, so they're active drives, but after a period of time, 10 years, you know, 10 years plus they kind of still go, they fall into a classic Drive Services direction. and Drive Services has the responsibility of sustaining and maintaining those drives for our customers. So, we'll have a modernization solution to keep those drives running for another good 10 years, or even further. And then DC products, for instance, like your DCS500, 700s, even now with the DCS800 we have moderniation solutions to keep those drives and your applications continuously running without the expensive of having to rip and replace new drives. And then last, of course, but not least, we could also do competitor drives, right. So, the expectation or the understanding of drives modernization, as that's really drives in the cabinet. We have wall mounted drives, and those aren't really considered, by definition, "modernizationable" for lack of better terms, because they're just you pull them off the wall, you put them back on the wall. Really what we're talking about when we talk about modernization is opening up a cabinet door, right, and, and modernizing the devices that are inside that. So we can do that with our competitor products as well. We just have to identify what cabinet is in the application, and then we should be able to engineer a solution for that. And then, of course, what markets do we fall into? You name it. I mean, we're basically it's unlimited. So anywhere from automotive, aerospace, renewable, marine, water-wastewater cement, chemical food, beverage, O & G, right pulp and paper, mining, metals. Wherever there's a cabinet drive, ABB, it's a great opportunity for the Drive Service modernization solution to be identified for those products. That's great. And I'm also glad that you touched on what available markets, our customers have this modernization opportunity in. And so that's good. Okay, so you talked about upgrades versus retrofits? How are those different? Can you unpack that a bit more? What what's the difference between those two, The terms of retrofit and upgrade are thrown around a lot. Modernization happens to be like the hierarchy name for, for what's possible when it comes to moving on or migrating to the next generation product. So typically, you know, people think of an upgrade as maybe just a firmware upgrade or something. And it's more than just, it's more than that. But either way, both are similar offerings, providing life extension to the application. So, realistically, in its simplest form, or retrofit, it just basically refers to gutting and replacing all the components inside a cabinet bay, with either what we consider to be a kit solution, or a frame solution. So, basically, what that means is, depending upon the complexity of the drive bay, we may order a, you may order a retrofit kit that needs to be completely assembled as thought it were on the factory floor and built into the drive cabinet. Or, we could provide what's known as a frame solution, or a skeletal frame, that already has some of the components on it; it's already a built structure and basically it just slides into the cabinet. Obviously, decreasing the amount of downtime increasing the amount of uptime, you know, the faster things are to put together. And you know, we can hopefully, the installation or assembly will be that much faster allowing the customer to be back up faster. So, but these are always, these are defined by by the information provided by the customer and what the drive product is. So, either way, whether it's a frame solution or it's a kit solution, you know, the kits themselves they include maybe an inverter because it's an INU, or supply unit, right, or front end. So but again, it's it's the cabinet consists of typically more than that, right? You could have you could have the inverter of the supply, but you're gonna have fuses or fuse blocks, you could have disconnects, you can have some kind of control modules in there you could have filters, right, comm boards. And in some cases most cases we also provide you with a new cabinet door so the expectation is that when we replace a product as a retrofit, that you're really getting a new drive and basically what you're leaving behind is the existing sheet metal or the cabinet that the old drive is housed in. The motor cables stay the same; the supply cables stay the same, but we provide you even a brand new front door that accommodates the new all compatible control modules and any nuances that you might need such as like e- stops, reset buttons, start stops and any kind of indicators led stuff like that. And it goes it goes from you know this applies to either our low voltage AC cabinets right. That's our -7 cabinets or 07 cabinets and it's pretty much centered around the single cabinet drives or multi drive lineups where we can do individual cabinets at one time and then when we talk about upgrades, yeah that's that's the one where I mentioned you know, a lot of times people think is upgrade is just basically firmware but really what we do is we classify upgrades and the two types right there's hardware upgrade and the control upgrade. right. So like I said, contrary to what you might think it's not just some kind of like, you know, minor physical change we're talking, you know, in all cases, there's some hardware being modified in there. Both of these upgrade types usually change some physical component and the software that's in the drive. So again, we're not talking about taking an existing drive and then adding a firmware enhancement and making it like Generation-2 or Generation-3, that. The term upgrade here from an ABB standpoint or from ABB modernization hardware control upgrade means that we're completely replacing your legacy product or competitive product with a brand new state of the art active AC drive controller, front and back end, you know, the whole nine yards. And like I said, the upgrades, then, you know, depending upon how it's put into the drive, if it's on a multi drive unit, it's basically a drive that doesn't need a front end because it's hanging on DC bus. Or if they're ACS607s, for instance, as an example, and they're larger units, right, you're talking about a whole front end supply unit and a back end inverter section. You could do one or the other or both. That's the great thing about the retrofit is if it's clickable at the time, and you're talking about back, if you go back towards the the drive modernization definition, where you don't have to have a capital expense and wait a year or two to get a complete rip and replace, we can do the drive in sections. So, under maybe the same maintenance budgets where it's taking it, you know, you're spending money on repairs, right now you can utilize that money. And you can say, hey, I'm going to do the back end of the drive, which is the inverter section, giving you a brand new, for instance, ACS880 inverter, right? Because typically, the supply unit is maybe a diode front end. And you know, a lot of times those things run forever. So it doesn't have to be done immediately. But if the customer is looking for a complete, complete front end and back end solution, and wants a whole brand new drive as though he was doing a rip and replace, but he just doesn't have the limits, he has limitations to prevent him from getting in or doing that, then this is where the low voltage, low voltage upgrades come into place. And then, of course, we have for medium voltage as well. We have what's known as medium voltage upgrades. Medium voltage products, they consist of primarily components. If you're familiar with medium voltage for all those customers out there that have medium voltage, when we do a modernization offering for medium voltage, like say, for instance, ACS1000, we're talking about, you know, a Generation-1 drive that has an old controller in it, for instance, and that was made maybe back in 2002. And now, you know, here we are 20 years later, you know, that drive still is in great operation, but that control board is no longer available. So not only do you get the latest and greatest technology with a main control board, right, but you have some various enhancement features to allow the drive to do some things that it didn't do before. And then of course, we you know, we have to complement that word supporting components, such as auxiliary power supplies, or even pump redundancy. Are things that weren't available in the past did not make the drive more viable, and will continue to last you and we will support that drive for at least the next 10 years. Okay, great explanation on on the difference between the two. So let's talk customer pain points. How do we help them identify if they need an upgrade or retrofit? Sure, another great question with regards to a drives current condition. A lot of times customers have a drive that's been great for them, right? It's lasted 15-20 years. And maybe they've done some maintenance, maybe they haven't done some maintenance. And know how we typically, we typically recommend keeping your drive running in optimal condition by doing some PMs. But at the end of the day, it's not, that's not always applicable, the drive might be located in some weird spot somewhere in the middle of nowhere. And it just maybe doesn't see see some activity; some service activity maybe like it should, but nonetheless, for whatever reason, it's still going strong. But at the end of the day, when it does break down, right, for whatever reason, now the customer is starting to struggle of, of well, if it's starting to break down more, and I have to spend time and money on replacement parts. But now replacement parts aren't available or they're long lead times for them. But the cost of that, the cost of the repair or the cost of the component has really gone up and it's forcing the customer to do longer shutdowns, right unexpected shutdowns, right and this kind of becomes the norm. Though you know those could be considered extremely high pain points for a customer. So in situations where you know the customer needs minimal downtime, right, space is limited; you know, accessibility to the drive product is really a challenge; maybe the individual sections of a large drive only need to be done at the same time, right. Maybe a reduction in waste materials required because of environmental, environmental restrictions. You know, these are all great opportunities for a modernization solution. Like I said, as I mentioned before, you know, from the environmental standard, we try to leave as much in the cabinet as applicable, right, and still give you the latest and greatest in technology. You don't have to spend any extra labor costs in doing moving motor cables around or supply cables around, we're basically going right back into the same location and you know, and putting in a brand new drive and to keep your application going. So hopefully that alleviates the customer pain points. So I've we've really got time just for one more question. Where does someone go to find out more information,

Jamie Robinson:

You know, you can always contact you know, your local ABB rep, you can also contact a channel partner, but easiest thing to do really is that ABB does such a good job and providing information on the internet. If you simply just put in "ABB drive retrofits" in a search window for sure you're going to come back with a whole lot of information that's going to lead you right to Lifecycle Management, understanding what's available for your drive, what products are available, that'll lead you right into everywhere you need to go.

Mike Murphy:

Oh, that's great. I like how we make it easy for them. So, well Jamie, this has been a great discussion. I know I certainly learned a lot more about Drive Services Modernization. So that's all the time we have. Remember if you would like more information contact your local ABB sales representative. If you have any questions or comments regarding the podcast series, visit us at us-solutions@abb.com. Thanks and have a great rest of your day.