IT.UA - home page

Project Goals

Interpipe is an international, vertically integrated industrial group producing seamless and welded pipes, as well as railway wheels. The company ranks among the world’s top ten manufacturers of seamless pipes and is the third largest producer of railway wheels. Its products are supplied to more than 80 countries through a global network of sales offices.

The holding includes a management company and five production plants located in key industrial regions.

Before SmartEAM, the company used several separate IT systems. IT-Enterprise ERP had already been deployed at major sites, replacing fragmented solutions. A strategic next step was the implementation of a unified digital system for managing production assets.

Asset management is a critical function in heavy industry: annual maintenance costs amount to 2–5% of full equipment replacement value, and a large share of these costs depends on planning accuracy, equipment transparency, and operational discipline.

Interpipe’s management set a clear goal: increase the efficiency of equipment management, reduce unplanned downtime, and lower repair costs. To achieve this, the plants deployed IT-Enterprise EAM — a unified automated system for managing production assets.

Interpipe implemented IT-Enterprise EAM to automate key asset-management processes across all production sites.
The unified system consolidates all equipment data in one place — including classification, downtime history, spare-parts procurement, cost analytics, and repair planning.

A core component of the solution is automated tracking of equipment operation and downtime.
Runtime data is collected directly from controllers installed on production lines, while downtime reasons are recorded by supervisors using mobile devices or workstation terminals.

This unified approach provides effective control over repair activities, optimizes spare-parts procurement, reduces warehouse overload, and supports comprehensive equipment analytics including RCM-based diagnostics.
The system is continuously updated with new data, which improves accuracy and strengthens decision-making for all user groups.

Interpipe Niko Tube

The first SmartEAM implementation took place at Interpipe Niko Tube.
The rollout lasted 16 months and was completed in October 2015.
After achieving strong results, the company decided to scale the system across other plants in the holding.

A detailed equipment classifier was developed and linked to technical locations, allowing accurate repair planning and structured equipment documentation.

A digital archive of technical documentation was created, reducing the time required to calculate materials and components for repairs by 50%.

The downtime accounting system, integrated with the planning module, made it possible to analyze unplanned downtime quickly and accurately and build repair schedules based on actual operating hours.
This significantly reduced material and labor costs for repairs.

RCM-based diagnostics were introduced into daily operations, allowing the enterprise to plan preventive repairs for components with an increased probability of failure.
Timely identification of risks helped avoid emergency downtime and reduced unnecessary repair expenses.

After the first 5 months of using SmartEAM, the cost of equipment servicing decreased from $11.9/t to $10.8/t.

Nizhnedneprovsky Piping Plant

At the Nizhnedneprovsky Piping Plant, part of the Interpipe holding, SmartEAM was implemented in 2016–2017.
The project covered the equipment of major production units.
More than 120 users work in the system daily.

The automated system records on average:

• 110+ measurements from diagnostic devices

• up to 180 downtime events per day

With SmartEAM, equipment data was updated, repair sequences were systematized, and the use of maintenance personnel, materials, and components became more efficient.
Materials began to be purchased exclusively for planned tasks, improving coordination between production and procurement teams.

The plant fully transitioned to request-based repair management.
Around 500 new repair requests are added to the system weekly, coming from scheduled maintenance, diagnostics, operational feedback, and downtime data.

Interpipe introduced condition-based repair planning (RCM — Reliability Centered Maintenance). During the first year, the company performed over 200 RCM analyses and applied 20 turnover and 9 periodic repair rates. As a result of SmartEAM implementation, scheduled repair costs decreased by $2/t, the technical readiness ratio increased by 2%, equipment load nearly doubled, and maintenance inventory was reduced by 3.7M UAH — despite growing production volumes.

Dnipro Steel and Vtormet Plants

In September 2017, the project to implement the production asset management system was launched at the Dnipro Steel and Vtormet plants, both part of the Interpipe holding.

At the Dnipro Steel plant, IT specialists developed and approved an integration scheme with 19,000 sensors of the QMET MES system, enabling IT-Enterprise EAM to process over 1 million events per day.
The system automatically records operating hours for more than 100 energy service pumps, while vibration velocity values from bearing assemblies are captured directly from MES sensors.

Key project factors

Results

Implementation of IT-Enterprise EAM allowed Interpipe to reduce maintenance costs, perform repairs based on real equipment condition, and ensure high operational reliability through timely preventive actions when failure probability increases. As a result, overall equipment performance improved without increasing repair budgets or material procurement costs.