Parts-Trac

Capital Parts Planning

More than an Inventory

Intuitive User Interface

A Formal, Consistent Process

Track Your Gas Turbine Hot Gas Path Parts

Capital Parts Planning

ORAP Parts-Trac® provides a standardized data collection and reporting platform for capturing the expected and expended life of each individual serialized part, as well as its location, for parts planning and procurement. Our system is a web-based database platform that provides you with auditable and transparent access to your high cost capital parts data across multiple locations and users.

We know that many plant owner/operators track hot gas path parts using a spreadsheet. But we also know that using a spreadsheet can be increasingly more difficult as time passes and parts are changed out, sent out for repair, modified, and new parts are purchased. Tracking parts using a spreadsheet becomes more and more tedious. Additionally, spreadsheets are prone to Error and are typically managed by one person. What happens if that person gets promoted, or a formula is typed in incorrectly?

ORAP Parts-Trac provides you with a secure, auditable process that is flexible enough to address multiple OEMs and equipment designs including the increasingly complex life algorithms of each OEM. Additionally, you can specify customized life algorithms specific to your organizational needs.

More than an Inventory

ORAP Parts-Trac is more than an inventory tracking system, it provides you with a complete history of each part. ORAP Parts-Trac does provide you with the current and historical locations of each serialized part, but more importantly it tracks the "expended life" of each individual serial number and what its projected inspection intervals and life limits are.

A very important benefit is the ability to measure age against pre-determined life limits as a means to understand remaining life, both from an operational as well as a financial perspective (e.g. depreciation). Age can be measured using many different criteria or values, typically some measure of operating hours (fired, equivalent, factored, etc.), starts (fired, factored, equivalent, etc), cycles (full, partial, etc.) and often trips. In most cases, the OEM provides guidelines on the age criteria that are relevant to the various serialized parts that they manufacture/sell. However, in ORAP Parts-Trac, the owner/operator has the ability to customize life limits based on their own operating experience if they so choose.

Tracking "expended life" allows maintenance staff to fully understand which parts need to be removed at the next outage. It also allows for the development of repair requirements and procurement of replacement parts. Similarly, removing a part before it has reached its maximum useful life is an underutilization of the investment in that part.

Intuitive User Interface

Flexibility, ease of use, and informative, three words that describe the new ORAP Parts-Trac user application. We have worked diligently, over 2 years' time, gathering feedback from existing customers and taking time to focus on emerging technology and human interaction. The new ORAP Parts-Trac is focused on a graphical interface that allows for a more intuitive user experience. SPS has worked with a human factors expert to design an updated user interface that simplifies the tasks related to maintaining the current status of your capital parts.

All of the capability of the legacy system has been preserved, and several new features were added based on feedback from our users group on their additional needs such as, an intuitive drag-and-drop functionality for easily executing parts Transactions; customizable Advisories to alert you about issues with your parts data; a graphical view of all your parts currently installed in your fleet, storerooms, and repair facilities; and, the concept of Part Status which gives you a clear understanding of the "as-of-today" status of your parts (e.g., Operating, Available, Out for Repair, Repair Hold, Scrapped, etc.). Also, we are actively working on developing on-demand analytics dashboard and forecasting capabilities to meet our customers' parts planning needs and requirements – to be released as future enhancements (along with other capabilities).

The end result is a system that is easy to learn, easy to use, and very powerful.

A Formal, Consistent Process

There is an immense value in establishing a formal, consistent process at the start of your critical parts life tracking program. SPS has implemented ORAP Parts-Trac on over 200 units and will work closely with all key stakeholders to ensure that the whole process is thought through; from the workshop that SPS will facilitate, through the creation of a formal written plan, by tailoring the application to your specific needs, then training your staff, then finally initializing your existing parts.

Key questions are raised during the creation of the written plan, questions that have been developed by SPS engineers over the lifetime of ORAP Parts-Trac, to help ensure a smooth initialization as well as a document that can stand as a "playbook" for the whole company to reference regarding your parts tracking plan. Questions like; how will Sets be named? What are the relevant parts aging parameters for your business? What about parts that are owned by a pool? Is part positioning in an operating unit important? How do you treat multiple, missing, or inconsistent serial numbers? And so on.

Once you have the foundation established, SPS will work with you to train all of your staff and Senior Management on the tool and your plan.

Then comes initialization, a task that can be a huge job. We have seen it all, and will do what works best for you, either by providing you templates where you can upload and initialize the information yourself, or by leveraging the experience of SPS technical staff to take care of the process for you.

Simplify Your Critical Parts Life Management Process - Make Million Dollar Parts Planning Decisions with Confidence

Contact SPS

FAQ

I already have an Inventory Management System that tracks where all my parts and stores are located, how is this different?

ORAP Parts-Trac is not an inventory management system, it is more than that. Traditional inventory management systems track the "ins" and "outs" of parts using some version of a formal check-in/check-out process. ORAP Parts-Trac captures both the location and age of the serialized parts over time. This provides you with the ability to pull up any part, at any time, and know the full history of its life.

How do you track the complex parts life algorithms provided by the OEM? And, what if I want to track other life calculations that are specific to my business?

Part of our standard introductory workshop is to work with you to define what age parameters you want to track against your parts. The system is flexible to track both the OEM requirements and other age parameters that might be important to your business. We have customers who choose to track their parts life using both.

How does ORAP Parts-Trac handle multiple serial numbers on parts?

You are able to enter aliases against any Serial Number in ORAP Parts-Trac. This means that no matter whether you search the original Serial Number, or an alias, the system will pull up information on the original part.

TECHNICAL PAPERS & PRESS

Below are relevant technical papers that show how ORAP Parts-Trac is used in the energy market.