The Southern Nuclear Operating Company has entered into a two-year, multi-million dollar software licensing and services agreement with Datastream Systems to implement and configure its MP5™ package, an enterprise asset management software system, in three of its nuclear power plants.
Datastream’s MP5 (formerly R5-CAMMS®) will provide the foundation for a nuclear information management system. MP5 is an n-tiered, Oracle(R)-based client/server software system that can also be deployed on the Web. MP5 has been widely accepted by utilities, oil and gas, mining, transportation, and other reliability critical operations. MP5 features an open systems architecture that permits rapid integration with other software applications, such as business planning, financial management, document management and production controls.
DataStream describes MP5 as a portfolio of integrated modules designed to help manage high-value assets throughout asset lifecycles.
In recent years, the increasing competitiveness of markets has stimulated efforts to reduce costs, improve efficiency and increase capacity utilisation. Departments responsible for maintenance and repair tasks have had to ensure equipment performance, uptime and availability with increasingly diminished resources. This has led to looking for new ways to manage these activities, such as more effective scheduling of equipment downtime and maintenance personnel and controlling inventory and other costs.
Computers are now making a big impact. The term computerised mainentance management systems, or CMMS, generally includes any computer software application designed to track, monitor and maintain histories on high value capital assets such as production equipment, spare parts inventories plants and facilities and to compare and contrast key asset performance data. CMMS has enabled companies to increase efficiency and reduce costs by, among other things, reducing the probability of catastrophic failures, reducing unscheduled downtime, eliminating costly excess repair, parts inventories and allowing maintenance tasks to be scheduled more effectively to permit maximum utilisation of resources.
