Asset Performance Technologies, Inc. (APT) Ranks As Number Three Small Company
High prices at the pump mean soaring revenues for this company.
By Dennis Domrzalski | Special to New Mexico Business Weekly
June 27, 2008 - Albuquerque, NM: The price of oil keeps going up, who knows where it will stop, and everybody, except the Big Oil executives, is suffering because of it. Right?
Wrong.
One Albuquerque company, Asset Performance Technologies Inc., is already profiting from the surge in oil and gasoline prices, and it is hoping it will profit more in the coming year.
In 2006, the firm — which sells a software program that helps large industrial companies maintain their heavy equipment — had revenues of more than $450,000. In 2007 that grew to $876,000. Asset Performance CFO,
Mark Benak,
says he can't even predict what the firm's 2008 revenues could be.
The main reason for that growth has been the surge in oil prices. With the price of oil so high, any down time at an oil refinery means huge profit losses. And down times are caused by equipment failures. Sometimes those failures can lead to catastrophic disasters such as explosions and fires.
Asset Performance's main client is Suncor Energy Inc., which is looking to develop oil sand deposits in northern Alberta, Canada.
"Right now there is a lot of interest to get this tar-like substance out of the ground and turn it into very high-end synthetic crude oil," Benak says. "We have been working in the refinery to improve maintenance systems.
"Our software helps them do that job. It has an underlying data structure and 12 years worth of data collection, where we have been developing models for various types of equipment.
"Suncor wants to figure out how they can best spend their maintenance money and our software helps them do it."
The concept is simple. The database contains information on all types of heavy industrial equipment. For a specific pump, the database details all its parts and anticipates all the ways it could fail. It tells plant managers which parts are likely to fail first and what a failure will mean in terms of down time. That can be translated into dollars and cents and gives executives an idea of how much they will save by investing in maintenance operations. It also recommends a schedule for the replacement of various parts.
The software was developed for the nuclear power industry by Asset President and CEO
David Worledge. It's in use in 84 percent of the nuclear power plants in the U.S., and is also being used in Japan, Benak says.
Now, Asset is upgrading the software and hoping to market it to the oil and gas industry.
"They care about decreasing the amount of down time," Benak says. "Years ago, with plants running at half capacity, if there was a problem you could route things to the other half of the plant. Today, with plants running at full capacity, there's no other side of the plant to route things to. If a plant goes down, they start losing money.
"All of the big integrated oil companies — the Chevrons and the Exxons — they are all looking at preventive maintenance strategies and of better managing their assets.
"We can predict things like failure rates and the cost of failures, which allows us to figure out a return on investment. Maintenance has always been a black hole in the oil and gas business. They never know how much to spend on maintenance, and now we can give them that kind of information."
Asset Performance formed in 2004 in a way that small businesses often get started: Worledge was at a social function in Corrales where he met
Carlos Cashman, an engineer and entrepreneur. Cashman asked Worledge what he did. Worledge explained, and Cashman said, "We can form a company and..."
"It was a great way to get started," Benak says.
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To learn more about PRO-M and the services APT can provide to your business, please contact:
Asset Performance Technologies (APT) produces the revolutionary PRO-M, a unique enterprise software package with proven ability to deliver improvements in preventive maintenance (PM) task effectiveness and PM program ROI, setting the standard for Economic Based Maintenance (EBM). PRO-M delivers an optimal PM program for your site that can be dynamically updated to reflect changing plant needs and economics. It can be used as a standalone solution or to support corporate PM improvement efforts.
June 27, 2008 - Albuquerque, NM: The price of oil keeps going up, who knows where it will stop, and everybody, except the Big Oil executives, is suffering because of it. Right?
The main reason for that growth has been the surge in oil prices. With the price of oil so high, any down time at an oil refinery means huge profit losses. And down times are caused by equipment failures. Sometimes those failures can lead to catastrophic disasters such as explosions and fires.