Sparkfund Technology Subscription with Functional Guarantee:
Manufacturing
The Problem
Customer’s plant was faced with a large number of HVAC systems that were showing signs of failure and required immediate replacement. Furthermore, as the aging equipment became less and less reliable, the engineering team was regularly pulled away from the core business to tackle issues with HVAC systems.
- 5% of their HVAC fleet was over 20 years old.
- HVAC not core to their business, rather a human comfort/ancillary element and therefore approval to spend capital on it is rare.
- $1.5M of capital costs would never get approved, so the customer was planning to replace a few each year, but they’d still be saddled with high repair costs or non functioning systems on the other ones not replaced. It would’ve been a 5+ year endeavor to get everything accomplished they know they need.
- All HVAC repairs were reactive, and often costly, because the plant did not have insights into the function and health of the HVAC units. More time was spent diagnosing and figure out which vendor to call.
- Plant engineers are supposed to work on the manufacturing lines ensuring all process related equipment is working, this plant engineer was spending more time on HVAC issues that didn’t directly contribute to the company’s bottom line
Solution
- Equipment and system upgrades including 25 HVAC unit replacements, smart controllers and remote monitoring on 40 units upfront
- Ongoing preventative maintenance and repairs
- Full HVAC risk transfer - functional guarantee- if any piece of equipment needs replacement in the term, it gets replaced at no added cost
to customer - Visibility into system performance- more importantly Sparkfund is monitoring 24/7 to respond to issues when needed. Higher efficiency units
- Optimization of units- eliminating wasteful consumption. Peace of mind- customer can fully focus on their core business without interruptions, distractions, unplanned expenses, or malfunctioning heating/cooling equipment due to HVAC
Results
Today, all of customer’s plant’s HVAC systems and controls are guaranteed to work properly and at peak efficiency. Because we guarantee the performance of customer’s HVAC systems, engineers no longer have to trade off their time spent on their core business to address HVAC challenges or worry about unplanned emergency repair invoices. They can count on a fixed monthly payment to cover all of their HVAC systems.