A mere 1 month after an Energy Management Information System (EMIS) project was postponed ‘due to other priorities’ our client’s plant has stopped for 3 days.

About $500,000 lost in pre-holidays food product sales.

Not to count costs of avoidable urgent repairs and value of lost trust from clients.

Why did plant stop? Boiler failed.

Why was boiler damaged? Softener failed.

A softener repeatedly reported a problem. An employee repeatedly pressed ‘Reset’ button.

Is this a behavioural/cultural/training problem? – Yes.

Could stoppage still have been prevented? – Yes.

If an EMIS were implemented, a SOS from softener would have made it to maintenance manager through an alert or a daily report and the whole costly emergency could have been prevented.

EMIS is not about energy. Energy for manufacturing plant is like blood for a body: everything that happens affect energy use.

EMIS is about knowing what is going on at the plant.

Knowing what is going on allows plant managers to act, not to react on fires. This may even save energy.