Is It Time to Ditch the Route-Based System?
All I could picture was a garbage-riddled facility with maintenance workers racing around like a scene from Mad Max to fix the latest failure. I sat there astonished as the Plant Manager explained the issues they were dealing with currently. One of these issues included forking out a sizeable chunk of change for health monitoring of their critical assets through a route-based contractor. On top of this sizeable amount of money they were spending, the assets they were monitoring were throwing a bearing every 30 days unbeknownst to their contractor. As my father-in-law would say “It’s like standing in a cold shower ripping up $100 bills.” Predictive maintenance is a key pillar to success in the manufacturing world today but utilizing the right resources and making your money work for you is essential.
Think about what recent predictive maintenance programs have revolved around. To put it simply: route-based machine health readings. Whether it be infrared, ultrasonic, vibration, you name it. You have a team or contractor responsible for coming in during set intervals to take readings of critical assets. These can be done monthly, quarterly, or even yearly (yikes!). Through this snapshot of data, they can tell if your machine is running well or not.
Then you run into a similar situation as Mr. Plant Manager I mentioned previously. During the last visit your route-based contractor verified there was no threat of impending doom. Fast forward two weeks as the maintenance tech is changing a bearing out, due to failure, causing unplanned downtime. (Example above) But what happened? There was just a comprehensive temperature and vibration reading of that bearing, and it was fine. As much as you don’t want to face it, it’s not a perfect story and you’re not going to get what you need by reading one page. There is a true misconception that machine failure is always a steady curve down to the point of doom. However, we find that it’s much rockier navigating our way to a failure with many highs and lows of machine behavior along the way. The only way to see this all and catch a failure before it happens consistently is to monitor continuously. There’s no debating that route-based machine health readings are helping maintenance teams catch faults – but at what cost? Another issue that comes up while conversing with the boots on the ground is that route-based technicians want to be extremely conservative, so a failure doesn’t happen between the readings. This tends to happen especially with contracted services. Sure, a failure was prevented but at what cost? Changing out a pump three months too early? The point of these readings is to minimize downtime, failures, save money, and increase the life of assets. Changing a part way too early on critical equipment isn’t helping the cause.
IIoT and Industry 4.0 initiatives are being strategized, implemented, and in some cases already executed. The biggest portion of a successful IIoT strategy is data. It has helped to make educated decisions in real time. For data to be useful in this strategy, it must be continuously collected. This continuous flow of information and the analysis that goes behind it will allow a team to baseline their equipment, track how much damage a machine is acquiring over a period, and optimize it. This is just not possible with a route-based health monitoring strategy. While data is important for your factory of the future, more important is how often you’re gathering it and what you decide to do with it. Utilizing continuous monitoring solutions to make real time educated decisions is the start of your long, successful trek to a successful IIoT initiative. Your machines are speaking to you every minute of the day – are you going to listen to them?
*Interested in learning more or reading more in depth about industrial maintenance strategies and fighting unplanned downtime? Reach out to me for a link to two free eBooks for a more in depth look at the challenges faced by manufacturing plants on a day to day basis.
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