€100K Saved: How Elkem Prevented Fan Failure with Predictive Maintenance

By catching early warning signs of fan motor faults, Elkem avoided costly downtime and environmental risks, while reducing alarm overload for the team.

Executive summary

With Viking Analytics, we can quickly spot which assets need attention—no more digging through endless charts. It’s made our work with Elkem much more focused and effective.

Gísli Arnar Guðmundsson

Maintenance Manager at HD

Customer

HD

Employees

7200+

Turnover

Location

Grundartangi/Reykjavik, Iceland

Production

Steel, high specialty grades FeSi (ferrosilicones) products

Heat

Electricity

Elkem’s ferrosilicon plant in Iceland partnered with HD and Viking Analytics to monitor nine critical exhaust fans—vital for environmental control and production continuity. Previously overwhelmed by alarms and raw sensor data, HD adopted Viking’s AI-powered vibration analysis platform to focus only on high-priority issues. With 42 sensors and weekly checks, the team now detects faults earlier and avoids unnecessary stops. In one case, Viking Analytics helped prevent a failure that could have cost Elkem up to €100,000 in lost revenue.

Solution

Installed sensors and used MultiViz to focus only on the top 2–5% of risky assets.

Challenge

Fan failures triggered environmental risk and costly downtime; too many alarms overwhelmed HD’s team.

Assets

Result

Prevented critical failure — avoiding up to €100K in losses.

€100K Saved: How Elkem Prevented Fan Failure with Predictive Maintenance

Executive summary

HD

7200+

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