A large end-user in the oil- and gas industry was facing issues with failures consistently getting reported on their critical valves.

The end-user had a total of 30 critical valves at their facilities and were having a difficult time identifying the exact cause of their troubles. Furthermore, the workers at the site had difficulties gathering data of the failures and communication it to the rest of the organization.

On 5 out of the 30 critical valves Val Controls units were installed for online monitoring for a period of 12 months. The purpose of the Val Controls units was to exercise the valves between shutdowns and monitor the valves in operation. After 12 months the data was collected from the 5 monitored valves and presented to the organization.

The results highlighted and quantified the failures during operations and were later presented to the organization. After the data were presented and a root cause analysis were done, several causes for the failures were identified. Once the failures were highlighted, the management were able to take proper action and handle the failures based on data driven decisions. 

Data driven decisions
By monitoring the critical valves for a period of time, the end-user is able to do a root cause analysis of their operating failures and take the right actions in order to fix their operating failures. Without monitoring it can be challenging to identify the issues and communicate it to the rest of the organization.

Increased efficiency
Once the operating failures were identified, the end-user increased the efficiency due to reduced downtime at their facilities. The increased efficiency came from less time spent on troubleshooting and as well as the increased up-time of the facility.

Reduced operations cost
The increased efficiency led to a reduction of the operating costs once the 12-month test period was over and the proper actions was taken in order to eliminate the cause of the operating failures.