Optimise your HVAC equipments with digitally-enabled chiller service

An outcome-based chiller service helps lower emergency repairs, minimise downtime and improve equipment reliability.

By Joni Zein, Vice President, Services, Asia Pacific

Whether manufacturing facilities are 100 years old or on the drawing board, smart technology is the key to delivering fully connected, operationally efficient, safe, and profitable manufacturing processes

Johnson Controls addresses the barriers to success from eliminating downtime to improving workplace environment and safety that links everything through comprehensive building management.

Johnson Controls offers the same industrial-based HVAC and production cooling and heating equipment employed in our own award-winning global manufacturing facilities. Our approach to lifecycle asset management consulting and planned operations and maintenance reduces risk, ensures uptime, and extends the life of assets. Hence implementing full lifecycle manufacturing solutions increase operational efficiency, reduces risk, compresses project timelines, and lowers costs so quality products get out the door.

Every substantial facility needs efficient, reliable climate control. Today, Johnson Controls offers the largest portfolio of HVAC equipment and controls in the world. With the shift towards sustainability, there is a need for chillers today to support the needs of building operators and facilities managers while remaining efficient and intelligent to provide enhanced performance and greater flexibility through the use of outcome-based chiller service. Being ‘outcome-based’ refers to how building operators and facilities managers can decide and perform actions centered around integrated data and analytics.

In the past, chillers have pre-determined scheduled maintenance or were only called for service when they are down. Anomalies affecting the chiller performance, such as approach temperatures, variation in operating thermodynamic parameters, and blocked tubes, can only be detected during such visits. Such processes can drive up repair and energy costs, and downtime for customers. With an outcome-based digitally-enabled chiller service, the traditional process is redefined. By tapping on actual real-time data and information gathered, building owners and facilities managers can now make informed decisions and execute mitigative actions based on integrated data and predictive analytics.

Leveraging advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence-enabled analytics, the outcome-based solution allows for remote monitoring of chillers round the clock, diagnosing chiller operating conditions, predicting faults, and improving system availability. Beyond monitoring the health of chillers, the solution is also able to track efficiency at the plant room level — by proactively tracking the performance of the whole system and individual assets like chillers linked with connected load and weather data, generating in-depth insights that enable building owners and facilities managers to make data-driven decisions.

Why Is This Innovation Is Set To Grow?

1. Proactive Responses And Flexible Options For Chiller Services

A major advantage of such a service is for critical and remote infrastructures like offshore or onshore oil and gas production facilities, where customers can have chiller equipment remotely and safely monitored to ensure maximum reliability and availability of the assets. The outcome-based service can also be applied to all the built environment industries, including buildings like healthcare, data centres, commercial real estate, schools, workplaces, and many more.

As governments and businesses face increasing pressure to optimise efficiency and prove sustainability targets, an outcome-based chiller service platform can measure and verify the data quickly and effectively. The predictive approach of the outcome-based chiller service allows for a before-and-after comparison, where the differences in efficiency gains can be obtained easily. Equipment that is remotely monitored and analysed can also quickly alert a customer if their equipment efficiency has decreased, minimising the impact of required thresholds.

Through the detailed automated reports, customers are kept informed on the health of their assets, which provide them with greater visibility of the equipment’s performance allowing them to reduce operating costs, improve equipment reliability, and use data to justify recommended upgrades or solutions.

Johnson Controls OpenBlue Platform

OpenBlue was designed with agility, flexibility and scalability in mind, to enable buildings to become dynamic spaces. In leveraging the OpenBlue platform, customers will be able to manage operations more systemically, delivering buildings that have memory, intelligence and unique identity. The platform infuses the OpenBlue suite of solutions and services with award-winning artificial intelligence (AI), combining data from both inside and outside of buildings.

Johnson Controls OpenBlue is the culmination of years of research and development by the Company’s industry-leading engineers and data scientists around the globe, to create the ‘blueprint for the future’ to guide smart, sustainable buildings. The new suite of connected solutions enables previously unimaginable occupant experiences, respectful safety and security, and impactful sustainability, driven by cutting-edge connected technology.

Leveraging advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence-enabled analytics, Johnson Controls OpenBlue platform is able to track efficiency at the plant room level, beyond just monitoring the health of chillers. By proactively tracking the performance of the whole system and individual assets like chillers linked with connected load and weather data, the OpenBlue platform generates in-depth insights that enable building owners and facilities managers to make data-driven decisions.

To date, Johnson Controls frontline service professionals in Asia Pacific are serving over 650 customers with proactive monitoring on more than 2,000 connected chillers on the OpenBlue platform, an increase of five times from when the transformation journey kicked off last year. With such detailed insights on the equipment, Johnson Controls has enabled customers to cut unplanned emergency repairs by 66 percent and shorten repair time by 65 percent, on average. These capabilities, together with detailed automated reports, help inform customers on the health of their assets, provide them with greater visibility of the equipment’s performance and aid in improving their budget planning processes.

The article was first published on Asia Pacific Metalworking Equipment News magazine