Mechanical Technology March 2015

Mechanical Technology — March 2015

⎪

Special report

⎪

pening ABB’s annual press

briefing, southern Africa

managing director, Leon

Viljoen, says in spite of

negative impacts of the mining strike

followed by the wage strike by the

metalworkers: “We are pleased with our

performance in the past year, which was

achieved against a very tough trading

environment in Southern Africa.”

The negative impact was reflected in a

R1-billion drop in South African revenue,

from R5.9-billion in 2013 to R4.9-billion

in 2014. “However, we were still able to

grow our base orders by 8.0 %,” Viljoen

reveals. “South Africa and a number of

the countries in the region where we

operate continue to face energy supply

challenges, and ABB is well positioned

to supply state-of-the-art technology and

customised solutions to alleviate the

strain on the grid,” he adds.

“Eskom is facing breakdowns at power

stations on a regular basis,” he continues,

“but it is a little unfair to say they have

been neglecting maintenance totally. The

key reason for the current difficulties is

the system is at its limit with respect

to capacity, which leaves little time to

proactively respond to reduce the risks

of sporadic breakdowns,” he explains.

ABB has ongoing service contracts

with Eskom and is in the process of sign-

ing a further equipment upgrade contract.

“We don’t see a pull back in terms of

maintenance upgrades. In fact, we see

the opposite. We are currently executing

a substantial contract for replacing motors

at power stations, for example. As part

of the contract we assessed the remain-

ing life of the motors and, based on that

assessment, we are replacing motors.

We are currently seeing a much greater

maintenance focus than we did, say, five

years ago,” Viljoen tells

MechTech

Responding to the shortage of mainte-

nance skills, Viljoen does not believe that

South Africa has serious maintenance

capacity issues: “Between Eskom and the

service providers to the power industry,

servicing capacity is available. We need

to do more to overcome skills shortages,

though. If you look at the skills base, we

have a lot of highly skilled people in the

50 to 60 age group, but below that, there

is a generation gap, people did not want

to become artisans. We are seeing a shift

in attitudes from our younger people,

who now recognise that the demand is

there and they can see career paths for

technically skilled artisans,” he says.

“Young people are migrating towards the

trades, but it is very important that we

act quickly to get these people properly

trained and experienced before the older

generation leaves the system.”

In response, ABB has kicked off

a project to build an internationally

benchmarked training centre at its head

office in Longmeadow. “This ‘Centre of

Excellence’ will be an interactive training

centre that showcases ABB’s ability to

deliver learning solutions to employees

and customers as a holistic endeavour,”

Viljoen says. Sophisticated learning aids,

such as simulators, product cut-outs and

demonstration units will be added to ap-

peal to the young modern learner.

The new facility will deliver learning

programmes for all five ABB divisions.

The strategy emphasises business

involvement and the development of

training infrastructure, which will be

expanded to offer high, medium and low

voltage training.

On the occasion of ABB’s annual media briefing,

Peter Middleton

interviews Leon Viljoen (right),

ABB South Africa’s managing director, to

find out more about his outlook for ABB,

and the power industry in South Africa

and across the continent.

Power in southern Africa:

a positive outlook

“Training is the central pillar of the

service side of our business. The new

programmes will be used to upskill our

own staff and for customer training. I

have not spoken to one utility that does

not require training to upskill their service

people, so this is a huge opportunity,”

Viljoen says.

In response to the adoption of proac-

tive/preventative approaches to mainte-

nance, Viljoen says that a lot of people

have been very sceptical. “Now, though,

there is better acceptance. Contracts

such as Eskom’s motor replacement

project were based on a modern analysis

system that can determine the remaining

life of an electric motor. People are now

much more willing to act and invest,

based on predictive techniques such

as these, because the cost and conse-

quences of unscheduled breakdowns

have become obvious,” he notes.

“Monitoring is also becoming accepted

on remote sites in Africa. More and more

customers want to know the status and

condition of their equipment at all times,

so we are seeing a move to much smarter

equipment, even on the distribution side

of our business. We have recently installed

substations with remote switching and

information status capability that gives

operators immediate fault alarms and

allows circuits to be shut off remotely.

These smarter systems are now available