RESCUING ESSENTIAL SERVICE OPERATIONS DURING DOWNTIME AMIDST PANDEMIC – A CASE STUDY BY GRUNDFOS

Ecowize South Africa is one of the leading specialized hygiene and sanitation service providers for numerous food and beverage facilities in South Africa. With several decades of experience in protecting food sector brands with outstanding hygiene and cleaning expertise, Ecowize has become the market leader in high performance and high compliance cleaning solutions covering all aspects of hygiene, food safety, and biosecurity – from farm to fork.

THE SITUATION

Low-pressure pump systems are the main supply of water used during the cleaning and sanitation process in food production facilities and any downtime of the booster set could result in production losses and potential food safety risks.

Normally visual inspections to each site would be conducted for preventative maintenance on pump systems or a technician team would be deployed to investigate small alarms such as voltage fluctuations. However, with the COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa, such travels have become limited to allow for the safe practice of social distancing.

THE SOLUTION

Ecowize, partnered with Grundfos SSA to play their role in ensuring food security is maintained during the COVID-19 pandemic by installing the Grundfos Remote Management system (GRM) across various food production facilities in South Africa.

As the Grundfos MGE-motor – surface motor with integrated VSD – is instrumental for the installation of GRM systems, Ecowize replaced various standard motors with Grundfos IE5 MGE-motors and at some pump stations replaced complete pump sets that were outdated to not only accommodate the GRM systems but provide more energy-efficient solutions

THE OUTCOME

Grundfos Remote Management system not only allowed Ecowize to continue their frontline work as an essential service but also allowed them to practice safe social distance during the current lockdown period.

“With the GRM system we can now remotely monitor the pump system performance, get an overview of all alarms and warn- ings, and access accurate real-time data to do preventative maintenance in the future live data on either a mobile phone or PC.”

-ECOWIZE Technical Manager, Tiaan Nortje.

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