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News Release from: Rockwell Automation | Subject: Condition monitoring
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 03 May 2001
Taking condition monitoring to the next
level
Plant maintenance requires a more thoughtful approach than just cutting budgets if manufacturers are going to improve financial performance, says John Seddon of Rockwell.
Plant maintenance requires a more thoughtful approach than just cutting budgets if manufacturers are going to improve financial performance, says John Seddon, European Sales Manager at Rockwell Automation Entek Manufacturing enterprises continue to come under pressure to improve sales and profits, and return on net assets (RONA) is now the focus when investors judge the financial performance of a business
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 10 Apr 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Improving RONA requires a manufacturer to generate more revenue from the same or smaller asset base at lower cost, and this means the plant and production assets have to work harder.
One key requirement is an asset management strategy that minimises unplanned maintenance and breakdowns and so maximises production plant availability.
Many UK manufacturers lag behind in this area, and are only now catching up with techniques that were possible back in the 1960s! So-called "lean enterprises" have already introduced aggressive strategies to improve operational performance, and these are yielding impressive results.
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One company has for example achieved a 25% improvement in floor space utilisation, along with a reduction in unneeded fixed assets, a 30% improvement in costs and a 50% improvement in the time taken to design, produce and deliver the product.
Such dramatic improvements in performance require a highly integrated approach to streamlining the manufacturing process and the supply chain, a strategy that Rockwell Automation now calls e-manufacturing.
Traditionally, manufacturing in its narrow sense (ie the factory floor where the production process takes place) has been viewed as an island, isolated from, or at best, loosely coupled with the rest of the supply chain.
Product was made for stock to enable the enterprise to cope with imbalances between supply and demand, resulting from unpredictable deliveries from key suppliers, breakdowns in the factory and highly variable levels of demand.
But in today's ultra-competitive and financially accountable manufacturing environment, this approach is proving hopelessly inefficient.
Now, manufacturers are binding suppliers and customers into web-based procurement chains that demand reliable, responsive manufacturing capacity.
Sharing information with customers and suppliers enables product to be made to order, reducing inventory costs and lead times.
This approach also demands increased utilisation of plant, putting new pressures on production systems.
In this environment, outdated maintenance strategies will not suffice.
Without buffer stocks, the financial consequences of a breakdown in a production line can be disastrous.
A plant monitoring and maintenance system has to support the production process, rather than production fitting around unexpected repairs or planned maintenance shutdowns.
Achieving this goal involves moving to maintenance strategies that are predictive rather than merely preventative.
The good news is that this not only improves availability of production facilities but also reduces maintenance costs.
Under the traditional approach, some 15% to 40% of manufacturing indirect costs is devoted to maintenance - but as much as 30% of this is unnecessary.
Half of all maintenance is corrective, which is 10 times more expensive than predictive maintenance, and a quarter is preventative, which is five times more expensive.
Worse, as much as 60% of preventative maintenance is probably unnecessary, increasing costs and reducing plant availability.
Few companies these days can afford to rely on a "fix on fail" approach, yet pressure to maximise availability of production systems is squeezing the time available for preventative maintenance.
Some manufacturers operating 24/7 shift patterns may now only have a planned maintenance shutdown for a few days over Christmas.
A more sophisticated and cost effective approach is to regularly monitor the health of plant and assets, and carry out maintenance only when necessary.
Condition monitoring (CM), or condition-based maintenance (CBM), involves a variety of non-intrusive techniques that measure the current condition of vital production equipment, and predict their deterioration with a high degree of accuracy.
This allows the planning of maintenance actions more effectively to minimise costs, without increasing the risk of unplanned downtime, and at the same time, monitors the effectiveness of a maintenance programme.
Predictive maintenance should be seen as complementary to reactive and planned maintenance, rather than replacing them.
For each item of equipment there will be the optimal blend of these three approaches, depending on the impact a failure would have on the production process.
Many people associate CM with vibration analysis, but this is now just one element in an effective predictive maintenance approach, which can also include oil analysis and thermal imaging.
Vibration, for example, is a poor indicator of a clogged heat exchanger and, in most cases, a combination of different measurements will give the best picture of the condition of the equipment.
There are two key direct benefits in CM.
The first is the detection of sudden changes in condition, indicating an imminent catastrophic failure that could threaten the safety of people or the environment as well as cause considerable downtime.
The second is an early warning of incipient or potential failures, which can be tracked, predicted and prevented.
By using these techniques manufacturers are now seeing dramatic increases in plant utilisation and reductions in maintenance costs.
One chemical processing company saw plant availability rise from 70% to a world class 95% while annual maintenance costs fell by almost ?7 million by moving from a time-based preventative approach to a predictive strategy for 98% of equipment.
The next step in is to integrate CM with a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) to create a complete Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) approach.
CMMS optimises the deployment of all maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) resources, such as people, spare parts, tools and facilities, and maximises availability and utilisation of assets.
While links between CM and CMMS have been possible for some time, they were largely simple data transfer systems that were often switched off because of data overload.
Now bi-directional gateways and advanced software tools allow true dynamic integration, enabling the tracking of work recommendations and corrective actions.
Further developments will also enable the EAM system to link automatically to manufacturing control software to optimise production scheduling.
The CM system could, for example, predict that an impending bearing failure will result in an unplanned and unavoidable plant shutdown.
This could then trigger the production scheduling system to carry out a rapid modelling and simulation routine to adapt to this temporary reduction in output.
One outcome might be to slow down production to extend the life of the bearing, either to complete a vital production run or until the CMMS can allocate all the resources necessary for a rapid repair.
Rockwell Automation, recognised as a world leader in automation control and software technology, has dramatically expanded its capabilities to enable it to offer the comprehensive multi-vendor EAM solutions that manufacturing industry needs to improve financial, as well as manufacturing, performance.
The company's mission is simple: "To help our customers make more products at a lower cost".
The acquisition of Entek IRD last year, and the signing of a partnership agreement with MRO Software (formerly PSDI), means Rockwell Automation can now integrate a comprehensive range of CM products, Internet-enabled systems, software and services with the market-leading "Maximo" CMMS.
Rockwell Automation is also investing heavily in its Manufacturing Businessware suite of software, and has set up a new Consulting Services group, enabling it to meet the all needs of manufacturers large and small, whether they are looking for stand alone products and services or a totally integrated EAM solution.
Rockwell Automation has been supplying the manufacturing sector for almost 100 years, and is applying this accumulated experience to develop the strategies that will be essential for survival in the coming century. Request a free brochure from Rockwell Automation ...
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