Assurance Integrated Support

Solve your system outages fast with one flat fee.

In today’s economy, many manufacturing companies are keeping tight budgets and lacking enough skilled people to fill vacant jobs. Due to this, most companies cannot afford for unplanned downtime. The cost of a company’s downtime can cost anywhere between $110,000 and $150,000 per hour! Meaning nearly $20 billion is lost per year for process industries.

In order to help you prepare for these instances, Rockwell Automation has overhauled their Assurance Integrated Support offering. If you are unfamiliar with Rockwell Automation’s Assurance service agreements, I will be discussing them in this blog post, along with why you may want to look at improving your current service agreement.

When facing challenges due to skill gaps, or with no one on hand to troubleshoot issues, usually you would have to hire someone to come in at a high cost. Also add on the added cost of hardware, this can lead to a lot of time and money with no guarantees the issue will be fixed. Assurance will help you, and your company, avoid having to go through these different touch points and prices.

For those who may not know what Assurance is, or how it can benefit you and your company, I will breakdown some of the advantages and offerings. If you are aware of Assurance, or have been quoted in the past, I will touch on what Rockwell has changed and why you may want to ask for a re-quote.

Starting off, if you are acquainted with Rockwell Automation’s TechConnect℠, which provides remote monitoring and phone support, then you know that when you need parts and replacements fast, you need more than just a person on the phone.

Assurance can be a fast and effective solution to resolve downtimes. With a guaranteed 10-minute phone support, answered by a senior engineer that will dispatch parts and/or dispatch a Field Service Engineer with a guaranteed arrival time of up to 24 hours. All included under one support agreement.

Assurance provides all of the benefits of a TechConnect agreement, but also delivers parts and labor. If you have a TechConnect agreement, then you can cover it and more with Assurance.

89% of system outages are completely unpredictable. When your system is down it takes time to:

1. Recognize the issue
2. Diagnose the problem
3. Identify your resources
4. Resolve the problem

Assurance can help you solve these problems with direct access to experienced and highly trained engineers, get the parts you need along with an onsite engineer to call on. No paperwork, no POs, and no hourly charges. Everything is covered; all under one flat fee. This will help you and your business stabilize maintenance spend, and protect your budget. With Assurance you can reduce downtime durations by up to 68%!

Assurance can provide you with a fast guaranteed resolution when something goes wrong. As a comprehensive support agreement, Assurance includes:

• Technical support
• Parts exchange & repair
• Emergency onsite support
• Annual equipment health checks

Your Assurance Support Agreement also promises support for all Allen-Bradley high-tech products such as:

• Drives
• PLC’s
• Operator interfaces*
• HMI
• Motion
• Safety

• Networks
• Industrial computers
• Medium voltage drives
• Process controls
• Legacy & discontinued products
• Advance software

*Specific Rockwell Automation Products covered by Assurance Integrated Support with Parts Arrival Guarantee LIMITATIONS: Rockwell or Allen Bradley Drives Frame Size 5 or Higher, All Liquidflow products and Discontinued Rockwell Automation Products. Parts Arrival Guarantees are not available if Customer is beyond a three day drive of the Rockwell Automation HUB location.

Assurance is there to help you with all the challenges you might face. Here are some examples of how Assurance can help.

Example

A municipal water district in western Colorado with a mix of PLC’s, operator interfaces and PowerFlex 7 drives:

1. Called regarding recurring drive faults on a Saturday.
2. Technical Support & customer could not isolate the cause.
3. A Rockwell Automation engineer was dispatched to site at 11pm.
4. The Rockwell Automation engineer spent 2 days onsite tracing down what was discovered to be a power quality issue. The Rockwell Automation engineer provided recommendations to the customer on how to resolve the issue.
5. Cost = ZERO because they were covered by Assurance!

For those of you who already know about the benefits and offerings, but were disappointed in the price last time you requested a quote, ask for a re-quote. Rockwell Automation recently updated their prices to the service level agreements for Assurance. Therefore, whatever you were quoted for the last time may change. With the new pricing, you can find a service level agreement that suits your specific situation.

Another change Rockwell has made, is they now offer a full Installed Base Evaluation (IBE) to help you decide what kind of support your installed base assets may or may not need (this includes both Rockwell Automation and non-Rockwell Automation products).

With IBE you can:

• Identify the product lifecycle status via plant hierarchy
• Identify legacy obsolescence risks
• Identify excess/shortage of spare parts

• Include mechanical and other OEM electronics
• Identify migration/conversion priorities
• Baseline a Strategic Maintenance Program

Rockwell will send out a Field Service Professional to collect on-site data. After the analysis of your data, you will be able to work out an action plan based on the results and recommendations.

I think that companies can benefit from an Assurance Integrated Support Agreement. It saves you time and money when the unexpected happens.

There is so much more to Assurance, if you would like more information leave a comment below and I will answer any questions or concerns you might have!

See how Assurance can help.

If you want to know more about Assurance Integrated Support or would like to improve your current Rockwell Automation Support agreement, contact Buckles-Smith and we will put you in touch with the appropriate technical specialist.

Buckles-Smith is an electrical distributor with multiple stocking locations throughout Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. Contact us today for any questions you may have and we’ll help you out.