Maintenance Management

Article by Peter Brown

The data gathered from operating condition inspections and performance monitoring trends will increasingly appear alongside process plant performance data and be used to assign maintenance priorities and maximise plant uptime and equipment reliability.

Measuring machinery health by performance monitoring has the potential to give warning of a developing failure through the changing levels of a suitable parameter being measured, thereby indicating a change in condition of a component, machine or system.Keywords: machinery performance monitoring, machine condition assessment, equipment health monitoring

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 Change to Component Health Monitoring for Massive Equipment Reliability Improvement. Many condition monitoring (CM) techniques require that your machines and equipment reach a near failed state before they detect the symptoms of failure. This guarantees that you will have many machines in your operation always near-to-failure. Outstanding reliability instead requires you to create the conditions of long-lasting machinery health and to ensure those conditions are always present. As a consequence of having a machine health improvement focus you proactively cause equipment wellness in your operation and thereby create huge reliability growth.

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Thanks to Peter Brown for this article.

1. Introduction: 

The advent of the microprocessor has enormously advanced the process of vibration data acquisition and analysis in recent years. Measurement tasks that took hours only two decades ago can now be completed in minutes and better decisions made because of better data presentation. 

However, the basic processes of measurement and analysis have remained essentially unchanged, just like the machines from which the vibration is measured. The results of the measurement and data analysis need to be compared with known standards or guidelines and decisions made as to whether the machine is acceptable for service or maintenance should be planned. Increasingly these processes are being handled electronically but we are still a long way from replacing the fundamental knowledge and experience of the vibration analyst. 

In this article we will review the basic principles of vibration measurement and analysis in order to lay the foundation for capable fault diagnosis to be considered later.

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When it comes to Risk we have simplified it so much that we have failed Einstein’s advice, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” It has been made too simple and missed the connection between risk and reliability.

Equipment risk has a direct impact on equipment reliability. What risks you allow your production plant and equipment to suffer will negatively impact its reliability. About 6 months ago I was playing about with the risk equation and a mathematical connection between risk and reliability revealed itself.

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 Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) was developed by the aircraft industry and it has now migrated into industries across the world. The aircraft industry does RCM differently to other industries. RCM fails in general industry because inherent problems in the business design of most organisations are prevented in the airline industry with business processes imposed by legal regulation. Using the RCM methodology does not instil the business disciplines needed for RCM to deliver its benefits.

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In the end it‟s the people „on the shopfloor‟ who have the task of making the products and keeping the machines going which produce the goods that the business sells. If you have the wrong people in the wrong places, if they are under trained and under motivated, then you will not turn the profits that the operation is capable of delivering. You may even have a disaster on your hands with people destroying economic value faster than they make it. 

How to get the very best performance from people, developing great attitudes, motivating them to continually strive to improve themselves and their work is what you will learn in this one-day workshop.

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Prevent centrifugal pump failure modes starting by removing their failure causes and make your pumps highly reliable.

There are over 600 failure causes that will make a centrifugal pump set fail. How many of them apply to your operation?

A rather interesting insight happens when you first look at this spreadsheet listing over 600 failure modes in a centrifugal pump set—there are so, so many of them. Luckily you have a second, hugely more profound insight once you realise what you are up against.

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To reduce maintenance costs and production downtime it is necessary to reduce the causes of the maintenance and downtime.  Both maintenance and downtime are an effect and not a cause.  The causes can be traced back to defects and errors from a variety of sources.  Knowing that defects eventually lead to future equipment failures, production downtime and lost profits, it is necessary put strategies into place to purposely prevent them occurring in the first place and to eliminate them if they are present.

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There is something very powerful about working in teams. That power becomes evident when you look at teams as human structures built to deliver reliable outcomes. Managers who want higher reliability, top quality production and fewer problems need to understand why teams are so powerful and how to gain that power for themselves.

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Learn what you need to know and do to quickly have world class maintenance and reliability excellence in your operation

In 2002 I wrote a small book after visiting Sumitomo Chemicals in Japan called the Japanese Path to Maintenance and Reliability Excellence. It explained the maintenance and reliability philosophy and attitudes that got Sumitomo Chemicals amazingly high chemical process plant uptime.

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 Remember, in Maintenance… 

1. THE BUSINESS PAYS FOR EVERY WRONG 
2. PREVENTION IS FAR CHEAPER THAN CURE 
3. DON’T DO WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND 
4. PREPARE THOROUGHLY BEFORE YOU START 
5. FIX THE CAUSE NOT THE SYMPTOM 
6. MACHINE HEALTH REFLECTS USER MENTALITY 
7. FIRST CHECK IT’S RIGHT 
8. RELIABILITY GROWS FROM QUALITY 
9. PERFORMANCE FOLLOWS CAPABILITY 
10. PROVE IT’S AN IMPROVEMENT FIRST 
11. EVERYTHING HAS LIMITS—KEEP WELL WITHIN

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Change To Win Process

‘Change To Win’ is a structured change management program used to introduce needed changes, best practices and innovative improvements into an organisation. A ‘Change To Win’ team consisting of managers, supervisors and people from the workplace is assembled to implement the changes and is responsible to plan how the organisation will adopt the changes, to trial them and then implement them into standard practice.

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Successful Wind Turbine Reliability Strategy Requires Proactive Removal of the Causes of Failure

The reliability assessment of wind turbine models is critical when making investment in wind technology. Issues to address include: corrosion, metallurgy, structural integrity, reliability, pressure vessel construction, electrical circuits, communication networks, and more.

Develop a life cycle wind turbine reliability strategy that minimizes operationg costs by maximizing component reliability.

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Here is a simple checklist of 31 simple maintenance management tips that you can use to improve your operation. Use it as a guide to start you thinking which maintenance management improvement strategies to use to lower your maintenance and operational costs without spending a lot of money.

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 Discover 15 ways to operate so there is less maintenance, fewer maintenance people, lower maintenance costs and (because there is less maintenance) your plant runs reliably for longer! Most of the 15 topics covered are new to operations and maintenance. Each one reduces downtime, save money and improves operating uptime and performance. 

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