In an industry operating on fine margins, unplanned downtime can be the death of profitability. Poor maintenance of plant and machinery can produce sub-par parts or goods that fail quality inspections and even expensive breakdowns.
This is where preventative maintenance comes into its own, as any operations director or production manager understands, preventative maintenance is vital to avoid these costly issues. However, we can all fall into the trap of repeating tried and tested methods that might now be outdated. Everyone with responsibility for maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) should regularly ask themselves: Are our MRO procedures robust enough? and Are we making the best use of the latest MRO products and services?
Credit: Rubix
Manufacturing and engineering companies are well-versed in adopting best practice for production – but are you doing the same for plant maintenance? By taking a more proactive approach to MRO, your business can protect your profitability and deliver great return on investment (ROI).
Keeping an industrial facility up and running requires a vast array of products and services, spanning multiple categories. There are several specific areas we would recommend for focus and prioritisation.
1. Asset tracking
If you are going to make truly informed decisions, you need accurate information – and a good place to start is a comprehensive assets survey. This process should include defining how critical each asset is to your operations. From here, you can create a detailed inventory of the spare parts held in stock to keep each asset working. This will also identify any areas where your business is lacking spare parts to support a critical asset.
2. Online condition monitoring
Leading on from this, online condition monitoring platforms represent one of the most significant developments in maintenance management. By using a combination of AI and sensors on your machinery, they can continuously monitor your assets and help to identify issues before they cause costly failures. These intelligent platforms evaluate historical data trends, enabling them to identify anomalies that might otherwise go undetected.
Taking proactive maintenance to a new level enables you to understand and deal with minor issues before they can cause serious disruptions to the production lines. While preventing downtime represents a major cost saving, these platforms can also optimise machinery maintenance schedules, ensuring that parts are serviced or replaced at the most cost-effective times.
AI can deal with huge volumes of data, in real time, in a way that humans simply cannot replicate. Self-learning capabilities mean that the longer the platform is in place, the more it improves its own issues detection expertise. Fundamentally, you can deploy this self-learning AI to undertake root cause analysis and set its own parameters to detect anomalies in machinery.
There is also no need for major investment as sensors can be applied to your existing machinery and components to give you and your employees access to a condition monitoring solution. These solutions should integrate seamlessly into existing plant management software, making it quick and easy to access insights and alerts. Alternatively, you can outsource the entire process to a third party remotely monitoring the data, such as Rubix, providing you with a 24/7 early warning system.
3. Manual condition monitoring
While Big Data, sensors and AI-powered technology can assist engineers in optimising their proactive maintenance processes, other more hands-on approaches can still positively impact your MRO.
By understanding when components or lubricants are deteriorating, you can schedule preventative maintenance to avoid expensive emergency repairs.
There are several strands to these solutions, each addressing an important facet of condition monitoring:
1. Vibration analysis enables early detection of wear and fatigue in rotating machinery, helping to prevent failure. By accurately measuring absolute and relative vibration on critical assets, experienced engineers can even provide you with a predicted time to failure, ensuring you schedule proactive maintenance before you reach failure.
A good provider will create reports on their findings for each asset, comparing current vibrations to historical baseline data. They will also provide photography and a list of recommended remedial actions.
Machinery such as motors, gearboxes, pump fans and compressors are often vital to the production lines. Early detection of vibration issues can prevent prolonged periods of unplanned production pauses, contaminated goods, or even injury to workers.
2. Thermographic surveys use a thermal imaging camera to identify faults or potential problems in your assets. These infrared cameras can capture differences in temperature on machinery surfaces. This enables experts to identify heat anomalies such as a machine overheating due to component fatigue or failure, or even electrical overloads.
One of the key advantages of thermography is that it is non-intrusive testing, which does not interfere with your operations – meaning there is no need for downtime while the engineers gather the necessary data.
When using this service, make sure that the provider carries out the survey in line with industry best practices. Parameters measured should include emissivity – the level of thermal energy emitted from a surface – as well as ambient and reflective temperatures, distance and humidity.
3. Air leakage surveys employ leading-edge technology to identify leaks in compressed air systems. By locating and identifying air leaks - and then fixing them - facilities can not only reduce energy consumption but also lower operational costs. In addition, they can extend equipment life by reducing unnecessary demand on their compressors.
In our experience, air leaks are one of manufacturing facilities' biggest drains on energy efficiency. In a typical factory, compressors account for approximately 30 percent of the site’s total energy bill. And up to 30 percent of compressed air is lost to leakage, meaning that a significant portion of that energy is wasted.
4. Oil and lubrication sampling assesses the condition of machinery lubricants to ensure they are still doing their job properly. A good test will look for contaminants, signs of machinery wear and chemical breakdown. If left untreated, these issues can reduce the lifespan of critical assets and cause breakdowns, with all the related costs from repair and downtime.
Protecting margins
Ultimately, protecting your assets protects your profit margins. Therefore, thinking smarter about proactive maintenance can deliver savings on secondary damage, lost production and unplanned maintenance.
Asset tracking and condition monitoring provide your maintenance teams with detailed information about the health and performance of your plant machinery. A proactive and up-to-date strategy can prevent revenue losses and enhance ROI.
However, it can become challenging to manage if dealing with a large number of product and service suppliers. Dealing with so many suppliers can be a drain on time, effort and money for manufacturing businesses. Working with a single source provider ensures that your company gains all the benefits with none of the downsides.
Industry understands economies of scale better than any other sector – so apply it to your MRO partners. That should mean a supplier with a local footprint, or even potentially installing a branch of their business in your premises. Additionally, it should equate to a provider offering a wide variety of products and services to fulfil your MRO requirements. Larger scale ensures improved product availability along with the most competitive prices and terms from suppliers, which also translates to enhanced support for special projects.
The right partner can provide the proper blend for your site, whether that is online condition monitoring technology or boots on the ground, or both, to conduct routine onsite maintenance checks. In this way, businesses can transition from reactive maintenance towards truly predictive and proactive models. The impact on the bottom line can be impressive: reducing the risk of catastrophic failures, cutting maintenance costs and ensuring continuous, efficient operations.
Rubix is the largest supplier of industrial MRO products and services in Europe. It supports clients in a wide range of sectors including manufacturing, automotive, food and beverage, and energy.
To discover more about how Rubix can support your business, visit: www.rubix.com.