How can you boost mechanical system performance?

Boosting a mechanical system means making it function to its maximum capacity. Understanding the system is the first and foremost step, understanding in terms of components, functions, sub system and it’s varying parameters . After understanding the above mentioned then modifications can be made to reach the desired performance.

Simple and easy to say, but hard to accomplish: the mechanical system should experiment less friction & cause less vibration to increase efficiency

Main contributor is know your people.Know their strenght and weaknesses.You can have the best facilities in the world,if your people are not trained you got a problem.

In my perspective first know u r equipment and its sub assembly parts and thier functioning, trouble shoot mechanisms. It becomes easy for a maintenance personal to identify its strength and weaknesses.

Understanding how systems work in mechanical engineering is crucial for achieving its optimal performance. It enables engineers to understand the interactions and interdependencies between different components. This knowledge gained helps in designing, analyzing, and optimising systems for efficiency, durability, and safety. By understanding the underlying principles, engineers can anticipate potential issues, identify bottlenecks, and make informed decisions that lead to well-coordinated designs. This understanding ensures that the system functions to its efficient capabilities, minimizing failures and maximizing overall performance.

Second step is the design parameter. In this section we should consider some factors contributing to the design and performance of the system such as ergonomics, factor of safety,compact design, weight factor, reliability and interchangeability

Each and every time I read about design optimization the same thought goes through my mind - the concept depends on who you ask. A mechanical engineer would more often than not pick the robust solution and not focus so much on cost. A quality engineer would like to see implemented fixes to mistakes of the past. A business unit manager will focus mostly on cost performance to maximize his margin. Simply saying " you need to optimize your design " has many implications that need arbitration. Where is the trade-off?

Maintaining your mechanical system on a regular basis is essential for achieving peak performance. This entails routine filter inspection and replacement, duct and vent cleaning, and lubrication of moving parts. After peak performance has been achieved, modifications can now be made to some of the parts, increasing other properties such as mechanical advantage, reducing mass, changing some of the materials used and adding materials with other desirable properties that maybe necessary for safety and endurance of the machine.

As well too general expressed. ?Optimize the design“ is in reality a matter of dependency of dependencies. As an employed simple project engineer working on a certain component there are other optimization aspects to fulfill than working as an free lance designer who might have the luck to be financially independent.

What I would like to add here is ensuring the voice of the customer (internal and external) is heard. Optimise the design should never detract from what the customer is after but also be mindful in over delivering on a specification. Over delivering to show off technical brilliance could lead to the product being too costly for the customer and therefore losing business. Another point is good Design for Manufacturability & Assembly. Ensuring that the design is as simple as it can be and the intent is fully understood. Ensure that features are sympathetic to manufacturing methods and tolerances allow repeatable assembly processes.

Every system is different and thus each require a unique set of standards, guidelines and protocols for the best practices. Educating the stakeholders from top down and setting a transparent explanation of why any practice is followed is equally important. Collecting data of improvement and failures will help support sustenance or changes to any best practice. Adding to this, allowing room to experiment and implement new practices and ensure they align with the standards system or regulations is also important. This also leads to reduction in variability without curbing creativity of the stakeholders.

Now it is getting chaotic. This statement is trying to combine ?best practices“ and fullfilling requirements of legal as well as codes and standards aspects. The young engineers will have to learn that fullfilling one of the earlier statements are contradictory to existing code requirements. That sometimes can lead to frustration because all you efforts to improve the design are nullified by the necessary fullfilling of a code requirement.

The way, system is being used, can affect its performance significantly. Method study, work study can help in evaluating the process & corrective measures can be applied to boost the system performance.

By applying the latest technologies, you can also improve the safety of equipment and the people working around that equipment or people who are using that equipment. Implementation of latest technologies such as machine learning can also help in boosting mechanical system performance by helping us understand the areas we can optimize or some parameters we can safely alter to increase performance.

Here again a statement with basically correct content but taking the statement before regarding ?best practices“ and the dependency of code requirements you often come to a halt as certain technologies might not be allowed by current standard.

Monitoring the performance of the equipment and establishing trends can be the most important step in the longevity of the equipment. Giving you an opportunity to more effectively create and hone in on a preventative maintenance schedule specific to each piece of equipment. By adding in maintenance if necessary or by prolonging maintenance based on these trends. Having a more productive preventative maintenance schedule can save time and money by applying resources where they are actually needed. Preventing unnecessary routine maintenance and avoiding major overhauls.

In monitoring any mechanical system the lubrication is one of the utmost part so choosing your grease or oil as per OEMs instruction & then analyze its performance specifically finding the reason of failure in any rotating part every time we encounter the corrective maintenance can decrease the maintenance by a huge percentage.

In many cases there will not be the financial background to realize this. This basically requires that producer and/or client want to monitor the product. But in our reality it is currently the status that products are created for the single or short time/term application and a performance or life monitoring is not wished.

For Continuously Improving a system or it's performance you need to gather Data by making sure the system/equipment/machine function in the way it is supposed to function or ask the question is it serving it's primary purpose right ? Observe and Analyse the system which is the most important step 1. Constantly/Periodically monitor the performance 2. Preventive maintenance 3. Continuous Improvement

I see a lot of great points, but one thing we in the office frequently forget is that people have to work on these things. Parts and equipment that make maintenance easy are always preferred to something that works great when it doesn't break but is an absolute bear to fix. For anyone who has owned a German car like I have, you know what I'm talking about...

Maintaining your mechanical system on a regular basis is essential for achieving peak performance. This entails routine filter inspection and replacement, duct and vent cleaning, and lubrication of moving parts.

If we summarize then its better to say keep each system & practice as simple as you can. The more its simple the more people will adapt.

I think of: Regular Maintenance, Component Update, Design Optimization, Quality Control, Analysis, Weight Reduction, Aerodynamics, Operator Training, Automation, User Feedback.

All very good points - I only don't see any bench-marking. For any system there are sort of efficiency thresholds that should be the guiding stars....