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Embrace the "Grand Energy Transition" P.15
Simulation modeling and advanced manufacturing P.22
Monitor motor vibration or optimize bearing lubrication? P.32
NOVEMBER 2016
Take your pick of apps and modules that integrate with your core asset management system to mitigate risk, extend asset performance, and manage the unexpected
The role of insurance in reliability decisions P.37
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TABLE OF CONTENTS NOVEMBER 2016 / VOL. 36, NO. 11
SPECIALISTS 07 / FROM THE EDITOR
Bridging the Digital Gap Is physical distance from leadership blocking your initiatives? 09 / HUMAN CAPITAL
Who Has the Blindfold? How to overcome the challenge of leading employees who are less open to being led 11 / TECHNOLOGY TOOLBOX
Industrial Motor Developments Avoid unplanned motor downtime with the right combo of equipment and processes 15 / ENERGY EXPERT
Embrace the Grand Energy Transition Be part of the fundamental change taking place rapidly on the world’s energy scene
FEATURES
DEPARTMENTS
24 / COVER STORY
32 / MOTORS & LUBRICATION
CMMS In Action
Monitor Electric Motor Vibration, or Optimize Bearing Lubrication?
Take your pick of apps and modules that integrate with your core asset management system to mitigate risk, extend asset performance, and manage the unexpected 28 / RELIABILITY
Involve the Reliability Engineer in Your CMMS Implementation
A case study involving a double-ended electric motor shows that ignoring bestin-class lubrication practices can deflect you and your facility from achieving motor reliability goals 37 / RISK MITIGATION
Are You Protected?
Adding one more person to your stakeholder team can help you solidify your RCM vision
Industry regulations and standards do matter, but sometimes insurance is calling the shots
30 / SOFTWARE
46 / BIG PICTURE INTERVIEW
Top 10 Benefits of Field Service Management Software Purpose-built FSM software can automate and streamline the service process while integrating with core EAM/ERP systems
Martin Hardwick, President, STEP Tools “Now, in the time the machine is doing a single operation, you can do about two billion computations on a desktop machine. So you can do an awful lot of run-time checking that wasn’t previously possible.”
17 / AUTOMATION ZONE
Situational Awareness and HMI Design Learn how this new HMI design trend can improve the efficiency of plant operations 20 / WHAT WORKS
Maximizing Safety in Real Time Wireless test tools assist in high-voltage upgrades, data collection at Linamar plant 22 / WHAT WORKS
Simulating Their Way to Success For Whirlpool Corp., partnering with U. Michigan students pays off in process improvement 41 / PRODUCT ROUNDUP
Safety Solutions Find the equipment you need to put a proper safety program in place 43 / CLASSIFIEDS / AD INDEX
PLANT SERVICES (ISSN 0199-8013) is published monthly by Putman Media, Inc., 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173. Phone (630) 467-1300, Fax (847) 291-4816. Periodicals Postage Paid at Schaumburg, IL and additional mailing Offices. Canada Post International Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 40028661. Canadian Mail Distributor Information: Frontier/BWI,PO Box 1051, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, L2A 5N8. Printed in U.S.A. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to PLANT SERVICES, Putman Media, Inc., PO Box 3435, Northbrook, IL 600653435. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Qualified reader subscriptions are accepted from PLANT SERVICES managers, supervisors and engineers in manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Canada. To apply for qualifiedreader subscriptions, please go to www.plantservices.com. To non-qualified subscribers in the U.S., subscriptions are $96 per year. Single copies are $15. Subscription to Canada and other international are accepted at $200 (Airmail only) © 2016 by Putman Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without consent of the copyright owner. In an effort to more closely align with our business partners in a manner that provides the most value to our readers, content published in PLANT SERVICES magazine appears on the public domain of PLANT SERVICES’ Website, and November also appear on Websites that apply to our growing marketplace. Putman Media, Inc. also publishes CHEMICAL PROCESSING, CONTROL, CONTROL DESIGN, FOOD PROCESSING, THE JOURNAL, PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING and SMART INDUSTRY. PLANT SERVICES assumes no responsibility for validity of claims in items published.
WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 5
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FROM THE EDITOR
IN MEMORY OF JULIE CAPPELLETTI-LANGE, Vice President 1984-2012 PUTMAN MEDIA, INC. 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173 (630) 467-1300 Fax: (630) 467-1120 MIKE BRENNER Group Publisher mbrenner@putman.net
THOMAS WILK, EDITOR IN CHIEF
BRIDGING THE DIGITAL GAP Is physical distance from leadership blocking your initiatives?
EDITORIAL STAFF THOMAS WILK Editor in Chief twilk@putman.net CHRISTINE LaFAVE GRACE Managing Editor clafavegrace@putman.net ALEXIS GAJEWSKI Associate Editor, Digital Media agajewski@putman.net STEPHEN C. HERNER V.P., Creative & Production sherner@putman.net DEREK CHAMBERLAIN Senior Art Director dchamberlain@putman.net DAVID BERGER, P.ENG. Contributing Editor PETER GARFORTH Contributing Editor SHEILA KENNEDY, CMRP Contributing Editor TOM MORIARTY, P.E., CMRP Contributing Editor
PUBLICATION SERVICES CARMELA KAPPEL Assistant to the Publisher ckappel@putman.net JERRY CLARK V.P., Circulation jclark@putman.net JACK JONES Circulation Director jjones@putman.net RITA FITZGERALD Production Manager rfitzgerald@putman.net RHONDA BROWN Reprint Marketing Manager Foster Reprints (866) 879-9144 ext.194 rhondab@fosterprinting.com
EXECUTIVE STAFF JOHN M. CAPPELLETTI President/CEO KEITH LARSON VP, Content and Group Publisher
As I write this, it’s the middle of the
fall busy season for industry events, and two themes have been emerging: (1) the general challenge of embracing digital transformation, and (2) the very specific challenge of how to gain the attention of the executive suite to support maintenance and reliability initiatives. First, the challenge of getting the attention and support of company executives. It’s no secret that the roles of plant manager and maintenance/reliability professional are becoming increasingly strategic. If you’ve not already begun to align your team’s KPIs to the higher-level business goals of your organization, then there’s a good chance you will be asked to do so in the near future. A recent Plant Services webinar, “How Maintenance Drives the Business,” is available on demand for those who want to get a head start on connecting these dots (http://plnt.sv/1610-web). This November, I was fortunate to attend the inaugural International Machine Vibration Analysis Conference (IMVAC) and sit in on a remarkable session by Delta Reliability’s Tom Clawser called “Selling Reliability to the C-Suite.” Halfway through the presentation, which involved lots of practical advice on cost-justifying MRO initiatives, Clawser stopped and asked a simple question: “How many people work in the same building as the organization’s senior executives?” In a room of about 25 people, no hands went up. The follow-up question: “How many work within reasonable driving distance of senior leadership?” Two hands slowly went up. It was a stark realization that getting projects off the ground only becomes more difficult when your teams are physically off the radar of the C-suite.
The other prominent theme this fall has been the emergence of “prescriptive maintenance” approaches. This term has been in increasing circulation by both plant professionals and EAM/CMMS software providers, and is commonly understood to denote the next digital step forward in the evolution of asset management, where required maintenance is predicted, and then a course of action is prescribed.
EXACTLY HOW CLOSE ARE YOU TO YOUR CIO AND HER EXECUTIVE PEERS? As Schneider Electric director of asset management Kim Custeau phrased it at its 2016 User Conference, “data aren’t meaningful without the direction to act.” A week later at the IFS World 2016 global conference, IFS CTO Dan Matthews reinforced that asset management software will increasingly be able to answer the question, “What should I do with this insight?” Both companies see the IoT as the connecting bridge between condition monitoring data and the larger set of business data (CRM, ERP, etc.) that can help identify and prescribe actions that drive best business results. The question is, are you close enough to your CIO and her executive peers to effectively initiate and maintain the types of smart MRO projects that will keep your company competitive?
Thomas Wilk, Editor in Chief twilk@putman.net, (630) 467-1300 x412 WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 7
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HUMAN CAPITAL TOM MORIARTY, P.E., CMRP
WHO HAS THE BLINDFOLD? How to overcome the challenge of leading employees who are less open to being led Imagine you’re blindfolded and placed in a room within a building with which you’re only somewhat familiar. Your task is to navigate your way from your current location to a point in front of the building. Specifically, you’ll need to exit the room, go down a hall, make a turn and proceed down another hall, down two flights of stairs, then go through the foyer to a specific location 20 yards in front of the main entrance to the building. And, you must do this within a 5-minute period and end up within 5 feet of the objective. If you try to make the journey by yourself, and you don’t cheat by lifting the blindfold, you’ll have a difficult time complying with the guidance. If you have the patience to stick with it, you most likely will not be able to make it happen within the 5-minute requirement. You’ll make choices – some will be correct and some will not – but nobody will be there to tell which ones are correct. You would feel frustrated due to unrealistic expectations and not having the knowledge or capability, under the circumstances, to achieve the objective. This is the feeling that workforce personnel (followers) have when they get incomplete guidance. Even those that have experience with similar circumstances may not know if they’re performing properly. They can’t be certain they’re performing the way their supervisor or manager (leader) wants them to perform. Now imagine that you’re again blindfolded, placed in the room within the building with the same task of navigating outside within the 5-minute time limit to the specific location. This time, you have a person with you who knows the proper path out of the building (the leader). It’s this person’s responsibility to provide you with directions on how to proceed. You’ll certainly have a much higher probability of achieving the objective. How well you make the journey blindfolded becomes dependent on the attentiveness and communication skills of the person who is guiding you. For instance, what if you get to the top of the flight of stairs and the leader isn’t paying attention, or if he simply says “keep going” instead of “you are approaching the top of the stairs?” The follower would be in danger of a critical error due to no guidance or incomplete guidance, possibly tumbling down the flight of stairs. You, the follower, would take the pain, and the task likely would be disrupted or not achieved. But the root
cause of the tumble would be the leader’s lack of attentiveness and/or poor communication. You may be thinking that the best approach is to remove the blindfold and let the follower do the task. After all, it’s a pretty simple one. That’s true, but there are two concerns. First, the follower has to know the route and be open to having the responsibility for the task – not to wear the blindfold. Sometimes people are unwilling, or unable, to make that
WHEN A FOLLOWER TRUSTS A LEADER, THAT PERSON IS MORE WILLING TO BE EMPOWERED, BUT A FOLLOWER ALSO HAS A DUTY TO BE TRUSTWORTHY. choice. Second, the leader must be willing to give up power. They must share knowledge and delegate while still being accountable – not putting the blindfold on followers. Some leaders are unwilling, or unable, to empower and delegate. In one case, the follower puts the blindfold on themselves. In the second case, the leader puts the blindfold on the follower. In both cases, the follower is wearing the blindfold. The difference is who decides the follower will wear a blindfold. The thing that helps a follower resist being blindfolded is the same thing that encourages a leader to not put blindfolds on followers: trust. When there’s no trust, both leaders and followers feel vulnerable. Trust is defined as confidence in the thoughts and actions of others. Confidence is attained by repeated interactions with consistent and/or predictable outcomes. When a follower trusts a leader, that person is more willing to be empowered. A leader has the responsibility to be trustworthy. But a follower also has a duty to be trustworthy if he/she wants to be empowered. When a leader trusts a follower, that leader will be more comfortable with empowering the follower. The goal is have high levels of trust. Realistically, every relationship between a leader and a follower has a dynamic level of trust; it varies with each interaction. When trust is low, leaders and followers each have a role in improving it. Tom Moriarty, P.E., CMRP, is president of Alidade MER. Contact him at tjmpe@alidade-mer.com and (321) 773-3356. WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 9
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TECHNOLOGY TOOLBOX SHEILA KENNEDY, CMRP
INDUSTRIAL MOTOR DEVELOPMENTS Avoid unplanned motor downtime with the right combo of equipment and processes Unplanned motor downtime is a costly show-stopper. Inadequate motor efficiency also harms the bottom line. Both conditions are avoidable with the right equipment and processes, and those options are improving. A new regulatory standard raises the bar for motor efficiency. Innovations in motor-system design and testing are improving reliability and performance. Professional training and repair services close the loop in effective motor management.
when run at very low speeds,” explains Marcus Orders, global product manager for DC motors at Baldor Electric Company. “Maintenance is also simplified in the DC motor utilizing standard length brushes and a mechanical system to monitor brush wear and change out brushes at scheduled maintenance intervals.” Michael Offik, director of packaged solutions at ABB, believes the convergence of cloud computing with smart-
EXTENDED EFFICIENCY TARGETS & ADVANCED DESIGN
INNOVATIONS IN MOTOR-SYSTEM DESIGN AND TESTING ARE IMPROVING RELIABILITY, WITH PROFESSIONAL TRAINING AND REPAIR SERVICES CLOSING THE LOOP.
New U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) regulations effective June 1, 2016, require motor manufacturers to comply with National Electrical Manufacturers’ Association (NEMA) premium efficiency targets for electric motors with a 1- to 200-hp rating, says Chip McDaniel, educational specialist at AutomationDirect. “The new standard closes loopholes and extends coverage to a new list of motors not previously covered,” he says. There will be a timeframe in which both the older and the newer types of motors likely will be sold. If efficiency is a concern, it may be prudent to check on the efficiency level of a given motor prior to purchase, advises McDaniel. Electric motor manufacturers are finding new ways to increase performance and reliability. For example, the Baldor-Reliance RPM PD Direct Current (DC) motor series achieves this with innovative DC motor technology. “An optimized armature design produces full power over extended speed ranges with smooth torque transitions
phones, tablets, micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMS), and wireless communications, allows for a new level of Internet of Things (IoT) products. Incorporating smart devices such as compact, intelligent sensors in motorsystem designs improves control over vibration, temperature, and other parameters that affect downtime, energy consumption, and motor life. “ABB’s new Smart Sensor for low-voltage motors brings users into the IoT to now include useful services that allow people to make informed decision and take action,” says Offik. PRECISION MOTOR TESTING
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Low-voltage motor failures happen early if variable-speed drives and inverter drives are misapplied, says Jacob Beck, CEO at Electrom Instruments. “We have developed automatic partial discharge [PD] measurements that find PD, can provide early warning of problems to come, and identify issues with inverter drive systems. In low-voltage motors, there should be no PD,” he explains. Electrom Instruments offers a range of motor, generator, and coil-testing products for manufacturers and industrial users. Electric motor test equipment and software offering onboard automated analytics for the technician, integrated with remote data analytics for feedback from the analyst, is the key to a successful reliability program, believes Noah Bethel, vice president of product development at PdMA Corporation. PdMA offers portable static, WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 11
TECHNOLOGY TOOLBOX
dynamic, and combination motor testers that trend the condition of AC induction, synchronous, wound rotor, and DC motors and their circuits. For predictive maintenance and troubleshooting, All-Test Pro offers portable instruments that identify electrical issues in motors before they stop working. Conditions detected include turn-to-turn, coil-to-coil, and phase-to-phase shorts and developing shorts, as well as cracked or broken rotor bars, uneven air gaps, and contamination. EFFECTIVE SERVICES AND TRAINING
Electric motor and generator repair is more than just repairing a failure, suggests Matt Dreisilker, operations manager at Dreisilker Electric Motors. “It is understanding why the failure happened and preventing it from happening again,” he says. “Using Dreisilker’s MotorSafe processes and highly skilled workforce, who work with the customer to understand their application and educate them, leads to increased uptime and reliable operations.” Companies such as MotorDoc, an SMRP-approved training provider and new materials research company,
provide industry training related to electric machine theory, materials, and testing, including time-to-failure estimation techniques and motor management. “Electrical machinery has remained pretty much the same over the past 130 years with materials, appearance, and efficiency being the primary exceptions,” says Howard Penrose, president of MotorDoc. “There are changes in materials that improve electric machine life, such as improved materials, nanodielectric wire, and extruded insulation materials that will challenge how we test and evaluate the condition of machines in the future.” Email Contributing Editor Sheila Kennedy, CMRP, managing director of Additive Communications, at sheila@addcomm.com. REFERENCE WEBSITES: www.automationdirect.com www.baldor.com www.new.abb.com www.electrominst.com
www.pdma.com www.alltestpro.com www.dreisilker.com www.motordoc.com
COMPRESSOR SERVICE TIP #9 Harvest Your Heat A heat recovery system can offset the cost of producing hot water for washrooms and equipment cleaning, or the costs of directing warm air into a workspace, warehouse, loading dock or entryway. For more helpful tips: www.atlascopco.us – 866-546-3588
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ENERGY EXPERT PETER GARFORTH
EMBRACE THE GRAND ENERGY TRANSITION Be part of the fundamental change taking place rapidly on the world’s energy scene A recent report by the World Energy Council suggests that global primary energy use per capita could peak as soon as 2030, and will be accompanied by continuing economic growth. This dramatic outlook has even been given a name – the Grand Energy Transition. Driving this transition is an familiar combination of efficiency, new technologies, accelerated deployment of ever-cheaper renewable supply, and the electrification of transportation. The ability to locally tailor and actively manage energy services for single buildings and plants through neighborhoods and entire communities is technically and economically feasible thanks to digital networks. The last few weeks have also seen some major players ratify the Paris climate agreement, including key greenhouse gas emitters such as China, the European Union (EU), India, the United States, and Canada. The total 75 countries that have ratified exceed the 55% of global emissions needed for the agreement to come into force. This sets the stage for continuing decarbonization of global energy systems. By some estimates, decarbonization needs to be as fast as 6% per year to meet the 2050 goals. Getting fewer headlines is a recent agreement by most of the world’s major airlines to reduce or offset a large part of their future emissions. This is the first time the global aviation industry has made such a commitment, albeit voluntarily, and the agreement is likely to trigger investments in offset projects including efficiency and cleaner or renewable supply. And the maritime industry, another major energy user, is looking for ways to reduce emissions by switching from bunker fuel to liquefied natural gas (LNG). Announcements like these in the space of a few weeks underlines the growing speed with which fundamental changes are taking place on the world’s energy scene. Collectively, these changes are reshaping the very core of a system that has remained fundamentally unchanged for decades. The increased range of options to assemble a reliable local energy solution also creates leapfrog opportunities for more isolated regions and less developed parts of the world to create world-class systems. Industrial energy managers, especially those operating at a corporate level, need to stay abreast of how the Grand Energy Transition is progressing in the countries and regions where their current and future facilities are located. The most likely short-term uncertainties will be the impact on both natural gas and coal. Increased use of gas for
power generation, land and sea transportation, and maybe even aviation, is going to have major effects on prices. The flip side of this will be the declining use of coal, a trend already well underway in most major world markets. The risks to utility pricing should be assessed and factored into energy management options. As has often been discussed in this column, the importance of having long-term energy plans for major sites
THE VARIOUS DISPARATE THREADS NEEDED TO MAKE THE GLOBAL ENERGY TRANSFORMATION A REALITY ARE BEGINNING TO COMBINE. cannot be overstated. These should be tailored to the local conditions and recognize the very real uncertainties in energy regulation, reliability, and pricing. They should have sufficient flexibility to keep the site competitive in the face of future energy uncertainties. The changing energy scene is also causing governments to reprioritize policy and resources. Recently, two of our larger Canadian customers reaped the rewards of having an approved 20-year energy plan at the ready. When the Canadian government released $2 billion for “sustainable infrastructure,” they were well prepared to rapidly submit credible proposals supported by comprehensive energy plans. They received tens of millions of dollars in incentive funding as a result. The energy manager also has to make sure energy is included as factor in site selection for new facilities. The opportunities and risks for years to come need to be well understood, incorporated into a virtual site energy plan, and included in the final decision. The various disparate threads needed to make the global energy transformation a reality are beginning to combine. The speed of change is ramping up, and the timeline is now well inside the operating lifetime of many plants. The energy manager’s job is not only getting more interesting; it is getting far more strategic. Peter Garforth is principal of Garforth International, Toledo, Ohio. He can be reached at peter@garforthint.com. WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 15
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AUTOMATION ZONE
CORY BODNAR, FAITH TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS AND HMI DESIGN Learn how this new HMI design trend can improve the efficiency of plant operations Situational awareness is the ability to identify, process,
DECISION MAKING
Projection of Impact on Goals
JUDGMENT
Comprehension of the Information
UA
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SAFE SUCCESS
SIT
and comprehend information about how to react to a disruptive situation. More simply put, it means that you know what’s going on around you. In a manufacturing environment, knowing what’s going on at all times is difficult for anyone, especially during a disruptive incident. For example, based on a study by the Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Consortium’s review of “disturbances in a process that caused plant operations to deviate from their normal operating state,” it found that: • 42% of abnormal situations are caused by human error. • 36% of abnormal situations are caused by equipment failure. • 22% of abnormal situations are caused by the process. It’s important for you to know what behavior is effective in maintaining situational awareness in order to minimize the number of incidents or abnormal situations caused by human error. Whether you are in a process-, discrete-, or hybrid-manufacturing environment, operations personnel must know what action to take and how their behavior will impact the process in any given situation, at any given time. This article highlights the concept of situational awareness, and why applying this approach to HMI design can greatly improve the efficiency of plant operations. While the concept of situational awareness has been around for a long time, the application of situational awareness in HMIs is a new design trend. Also, since 42% of abnormal situations are caused by human error, it’s imperative that HMIs assist the operational teams in making the safest decision, as fast as possible, even to the extent of trying to predict what will happen in the process. Situational awareness is dynamic, hard to maintain, and easy to lose. The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society (ISA) 101 definition of situational awareness comprises three states: • First state (perception) is being aware of what is happening in the process. • Second state (comprehension) is understanding the process state now. • Third state (projection) is understanding the likely process state in the future. Currently, most HMI designs only address level one, perception of new information, and rely on the operator’s experience to take the correct action. It’s well known in
COGNITION
Perception of New Information
manufacturing that we have an aging workforce and the potential knowledge lost to retirements will have a significant impact on the bottom line. The common mistake with the system was the goal, not the analyses of tasks needed to run the system efficiently. With this in mind, what should be the most important objectives when designing HMIs? • Goal oriented design • Task orientated displays • Reduced navigation • Reduced operator fatigue • Proper alarm signaling Goal Oriented Design. Designing and identifying the goals of an application is called Goal Directed Task Analysis. The process should identify the most important objectives of the system, which include maintaining productions levels, decreasing energy costs, and achieving QA/compliance goals. From these objectives, we create sub-goals that address specific process actions that are actionable to the operations team. What actions and/or tasks should be performed should be clear to the inexperienced operator. Within each sub goal, we need to address how the operator will obtain the three levels of perception, comprehension, and projection. WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 17
AUTOMATION ZONE
Task Orientated Displays/Reduced Navigation. Research shows that the average person can only process four chunks of data at a time. Therefore, our HMI design should minimize the amount of scans an operator must complete to determine what action to take. According to the ISA, the system should be developed with four levels: • Level 1 – Area-wide overviews: Key Performance Indicators (KPI), summary status information. • Level 2 – Facility-wide overviews: Key operating screens, specialty pages. • Level 3 – Detailed operating information: Similar to most current screens. • L evel 4 – Auxiliary information: Help screens, trend pages, etc. The focus should be on enhancing user satisfaction with the HMI by improving the usability and user-friendliness of the experience. Goals and tasks must be broken down to sufficient granularity to be relevant for the roles the system will support. It must be clearly understood what decisions the user is asked to make. This implies that an interface requires role-specific information and views. Here are eight guidelines to use in your design: 1. Focus on the real users • Create personas that capture a general profile, digital literacy, and work habits. 2. I dentify real tasks • Create a task inventory per role. • Classify according to functional categories and subcategories. • Use terminology that makes sense to involved roles. 3. Collect real content • Don’t ignore complexity and relationships between parameters. • Use correct units of measure. • Consider which visualization component fits best. • Strive for clarity and use the language and terminology of the users • Be consistent in language and tone. 18
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4. Have a device strategy • The HMI should be built and conceived according to device. • Establish layout patterns for the targeted devices. • Pay special attention to tactile vs. natural vs. mouse/keyboard. • If possible, align with the patterns and practices established by the device and device operating system (OS). 5. Build an hierarchy • Navigation should be intuitive: The use of clusters of items that are logically connected will lend itself to a readable and dynamic interface. 6. Interactions • Inform users with visual cues about object states, errors, and expectations. • Create different types of notifications depending on message severity. • Don’t disturb users for nothing. • Avoid the use of blinking. 7. Make it visual • The layout should work on fixed grids. • Use as much of the screen as possible, especially with tactile input • The use of text should be limited to essential information. • Use text labels: Pictograms alone are open to subjective interpretation. 8. The Process • T he interface design needs to be an iterative process that solicits feedback on designs. There will be mistakes and misunderstandings, so plan for several versions before release. Identify stakeholders for each phase, and over communicate. Operator Fatigue. Designers of HMIs have made the graphical displays their creative sandbox, creating graphics that emulate the process and justify
the automation investment. However, approaches often impair the operator’s ability to clearly understand the current situation and make the accurate decisions to maximize the business value. Also, high-contrast graphics and continual scanning of complex screens can cause eyestrain, and therefore fatigue. To reduce operator fatigue, the design should use gray scales and a limited set of colors to identify disruptions in the normal state. The “Pop Out” Effect. Our eyes are automatically drawn to colored objects. The use of situational awareness takes advantage of this effect to guide operator’s attention to alarms and values that need action. Proper Alarm Signaling. The definition of an alarm is to direct an operator to take action on an event. The issue is most systems create alarm volumes that are too large for an operator to handle. This forces the operator to create their own priorities when addressing alarms. The best practices in alarm management recommends the use of four severities; note that these times are starting points and should be adjusted to your process: • Critical – Maximum response time 5 minutes. • High – Maximum response time 30 minutes. • Medium – Maximum response time 60 minutes. • Low – Maximum response time 120 minutes. Cory Bodnar is the business solutions manager at Faith Technologies, Inc. (www.faithtechnologies. com), and assists in the development, launch, and leadership of various automation and process control (APC) programs and strategies. Contact him at cory.bodnar@faithtechnologies.com.
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WHAT WORKS
MAXIMIZING SAFETY IN REAL TIME Wireless test tools assist in high-voltage upgrades, data collection at Linamar plant Headquartered in Guelph, a small city just west of Toronto, Linamar (www.linamar.com) is a multibillion dollar corporation and the second largest auto-parts maker in Canada. Linamar’s focus is precision machining, and among its many products are the engine blocks for the Dodge Viper and Chevrolet Corvette. Keeping Linamar’s 60 global facilities up and running safely and efficiently, including 25 in Guelph where many of the motors and transmissions are machined, is one of the responsibilities of the team led by Leigh Copp, engineering and business unit manager for Linamar’s Advanced System Group. Copp manages a team of 72 people that design and engineer automation systems, and troubleshoot electrical systems and electronics as well as process controls and command and control systems. Inherent in that role is a commitment to safety and continuous evaluation of all the systems in the plants. A recent project awarded to Copp’s team involved reducing the risk of arc flash from incident energy at one of Linamar’s facilities. “Like probably every other manufacturer of our size and station in our market, we’ve got between 3,000 and 5,000 kVA distribution boards in our plants,” says Copp. The problem was that some of the standard switch gear and vented panels weren’t arc resistant, and therefore posed a significant risk to safety. “In Canada we’re predominantly 600 volts, with a 3,000 to 5,000 kVA transformer outside and a 5,000 amp busway coming into a 5,000 amp switchboard,” states Copp. “The arc flash incident energy is five times the old Category 4 boundaries, so there is no suitable PPE available. We were pretty concerned, and we started looking at alternatives on how we can improve the situation.” In one event signaling the problem, a seal had failed in an outdoor panel and rainwater dripped into the enclosure, gradually filling it up until the busbar failed and blew apart. “It was outdoors and nobody was around, but it literally was no different than if I’d put a hand grenade inside the panel,” Copp remembers. When working among electrical panels in high-energy incident areas or working on proactive maintenance like Linamar’s arc-flash risk mitigation project, Copp and his team deploy Fluke Connect Assets (www.fluke.com), a cloud-based system of software and wireless-enabled test tools that moves all of the measurement data collected by 20
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Source: Fluke
the tools into an online database and dashboard. Copp calls these tools “a game changer” when it comes to high-voltage work because it removes technicians from dangerous energized areas and records real-time data while associating those data with specific assets. For example, three-phase motors used throughout the facility can be monitored while in use after hooking up wireless clamp meters. Copp uses the Fluke AC and DC clamps equipped with iFlex devices with the Fluke Connect app. “I would put the instruments on, close the door, start the machine up, link them to my phone, and then go around to the front of the machine and actually monitor the voltage and current while the machine’s operating with the door closed completely safely,” says Copp. In the case of the arc-flash mitigation project, Copp’s team performed a complete analysis of the system and learned that the high-incident energy potential was between 190-212 calories per square centimeter – four to five times above the acceptable safety threshold for the heaviest class of PPE typically available, and well above what was considered high risk. In response, the Linamar team designed and installed a high-voltage protection system around the feeder lines coming into the plant. The new equipment brings incident energy levels down to a category 2 or 3 using the old category ratings, or to a level where there is practical PPE available to protect maintenance workers.
The Fluke Connect system is a growing number of wirelessly connected test and measurement tools that leverages Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology, industrial networking, and cloud computing in an integrated test and measurement platform. “Previously what we’ve done (to collect asset data) is to use paper service reports with good old-fashioned carbon copies, and I would ask the better technicians of the team to, for example, record the capacitance and insulation resistance readings when they were testing a capacitor or transformer,” says Copp. “Now, it’s pretty cumbersome to record a timeresistance curve, which is a very useful piece of PdM data. Fluke Connect Assets will allow you to pull that curve automatically using the Fluke 1587 FC Insulation Multimeter. You can absolutely record those spot measurements and associate them with the asset.” Another advantage of an app such as Fluke Connect is the ability to collect all the data from multiple tools in one place. The data is logged by date and equipment and can be shared easily – a reduction in the burden of data-keeping that Copp recognizes as a clear win for Linamar. “The problem with paper service reports is, where are those reports filed?” he asks. “They might get scanned, or maybe they get saved with the asset depending if it’s one that we built or not, but typically it’s an asset that we don’t have a record of because it’s somebody else’s. In one instance, the person in charge of logging those data service reports was transferred to another facility, and their role was not backfilled. The potential exists for Fluke Connect Assets to perform that function and record that data, so we can go back and review the history on a given asset.” However, Copp sees the biggest benefits of using wireless data collection tools as both safety and ease of measurement enabled by the technology. He cites the Fluke 1738 Power Logger with WiFi capabilities as a tool designed for more in situ, semi-permanent, condition-based monitoring. “We’re using that tool to perform remote checks,” says Copp. “You can put it up on a bus duct, so you don’t have to use a scissor-lift every time,” reducing safety risk with the ability to monitor the asset over the wireless network infrastructure. Copp also finds that the Fluke platform also helps him balance the competing budgetary demands of reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) while optimizing daily operating cost-efficiency. “Fluke Connect Assets can actually answer both problems: I can make sure the team is working more efficiently because they’ve got access to data on similar assets, and I’m storing the data without additional paperwork, so that’s an immediate improvement of efficiency. And on a TCO level, the faster I can fix an asset, and the less often I have to fix it, that pays huge dividends in reducing downtime.”
Source: Linamar
Ultimately, it may simply be the power of collaboration that will drive wider adoption of wireless data collection tools. “One of the things that’s changed in our team dynamic is that we don’t have the luxury of people with 20 years’ experience on every job, all the time,” Copp says. “We’ve got people from ages 17 to 65 on our team, and how do you share your knowledge and experience with them efficiently? Giving this technology to a larger team, they become kind of a hive mind; they can share the data, share their experience, and share their observations more seamlessly so they can consult on the problem and solve it faster.” WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 21
WHAT WORKS
SIMULATING THEIR WAY TO SUCCESS For Whirlpool Corp., partnering with UMich students pays off in process improvement Global manufacturing operations face unique challenges when it comes to improving systemwide operational efficiency. With personnel scattered across numerous domestic and international sites, there’s a broad knowledge base to call on, to be sure, but the use of different suppliers and products and different plant configurations at each location can make it difficult to identify, let alone implement to scale, production best practices. That’s the issue that Whirlpool Corp., with 97,000 employees and some 70 manufacturing and technology research centers worldwide, has worked to tackle with its Advanced Manufacturing organization. The AM organization, according to the company, “provides research, process technical guidance, and new process technology development” to Whirlpool’s businesses in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. “It’s really the only global manufacturing team that Whirlpool Corporation has,” says Mike Anthony, director of Advanced Manufacturing at the company, which records approximately $21 billion in annual sales. “A lot of the manufacturing decisions and how we approach the market are very regional in nature, and that’s for a reason – so (we) can be close to the consumers.” Still, the company wants to be able to understand and leverage efficiency opportunities at individual sites or in a given region as well as identify and address any more-widespread issues, and that’s where the AM team comes in. The organization is charged with three main tasks, Anthony says. First, “we have responsibility for developing process technologies that enable 22
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manufacturing and product leadership,” he says. Next, “we ensure we have common manufacturing processes and manufacturing approaches across the world,” Anthony continues. “We have the opportunity to see multiple plants (and) leverage best practices between plants and have the chance to see if there are issues globally.” Finally, the team works to resolve knowledge gaps. “If there is an issue with how we make something,” Anthony says, “it’s our role to go out and either partner with universities, partner with external suppliers, (and/ or) develop pilot programs to try to resolve manufacturing gaps.” The second and third tasks led the AM organization last year to identify latent capacity in the cabinet foaming
For a global manufacturing business like Whirlpool (pictured is a facility in Cleveland, TN), implementing production-line best practices poses numerous challenges stemming from varying plant layouts and the use of different regional suppliers.
area of its refrigerator assembly process. As Anthony describes it, “Traffic flow management of getting our refrigeration products into and out of our foam process system varied greatly around the world – it varied by region, by plant footprint, by supply phase.” He adds: “We noticed different performance rates out of different suppliers as well as how the plants are configured. Almost all our facilities aren’t greenfield – we don’t have a chance to start over. We have to fit things in where they can fit, mostly.” The solution? Simulation modeling – testing tweaks to processes and configurations based on plants’ unique footprints to find out how small changes could have a significant impact on throughput.
“We thought, ‘How can we prove what is the best approach?’ “ he says. “We thought simulating it would be the best way.” Effective simulation would call not just for advanced technology to power the simulation models themselves but also business and engineering expertise to make sense of the results and evaluate the feasibility of possible line changes. At this point, Anthony and the AM team – recognizing their third task of resolving knowledge gaps – turned for assistance to a graduate student team from the University of Michigan’s Tauber Institute for Global Operations. The two-person student team consisted of John Klocke, an MBA candidate, and Nick Walker, a member of the university’s Engineering Global Leadership Honors program pursuing BSE and MSE degrees in chemical engineering, as well as faculty adviser Brian Talbot. Based on-site with Whirlpool Corp. in St. Joseph, MI, last summer, the student team used ProModel computer simulation software to develop current-state models of cabinet foam lines in the company’s Amana, Iowa, and Joinville, Brazil, locations – the latter being Whirlpool’s largest in the world, according to Anthony. The students also traveled to both locations and to a Whirlpool Corp. site in Ottawa, OH, and interviewed local subject-matter experts, finance leads, and engineers. It was “lots of interaction and face time with the plant … to understand not only how the (refrigeration assembly) process works but also all the costs and indirect costs associated with it,” he says. So while software enabled the development of sophisticated simulation models, local expertise allowed for the input of real-world, from-the-floor insights to enhance decision-making. The Tauber Institute team and company employees analyzed timing,
changeover, and production scheduling data for assembly lines at each site and then created future-state models incorporating equipment layout changes that would still fit within each plant’s configuration. “Through the use of the simulation at a very detailed level … we were able to find where we needed to alter pieces of equipment, where we needed to alter programming, where we needed to learn how to (move) components into the system differently,” Anthony says. Students Klocke and Walker demonstrated that placing two additional sensors on critical equipment and altering timing logic could increase capacity 23% – about 6,000 to 10,000 units per year. The future-state models that the students developed will guide Whirlpool Corp.’s efforts to implement best-practice cabinet foaming processes in 50 lines worldwide, and the work “will ultimately provide multimillion-dollar benefits to Whirlpool,” said faculty adviser Talbot in a release from the Tauber Institute.
The corporation now is able to prove that by revising two or three pieces of equipment, revising conveyor belts, and altering sequences slightly, throughput can increase by double-digit percentages, Anthony says. “The reason this is important,” he adds, is you’re able to release latent capacities that we have in our facilities that otherwise we’d spend millions of dollars to fix.” And the benefits go beyond identifying opportunities to improve current layouts, equipment, and processes. As the company looks forward, it’s relying on simulation to inform buying decisions and operational plans. Site teams now “realize that the investment into working on a simulation package is almost mandatory” before new equipment is purchased or line changes are made, Anthony says. “I think everybody kind of knew about (simulation) in the past and everybody said, ‘Yeah, it’s a toy, it helps.’ But this program helped prove that the return was 100-fold.” WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 23
CMMS / ASSET MANAGEMENT
By David Berger, P.Eng., contributing editor
The importance of Computerized Mainte-
Take your pick of apps and modules that integrate with your core asset management system to mitigate risk, extend asset performance, and manage the unexpected
nance Management System (CMMS) software, also known as Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software, continues to rise for companies big and small. So does our dependence on these applications: Regardless of your industry, location, and type of assets you maintain, CMMS software has become a critical tool. Historically, asset-intensive companies benefited the most from CMMS packages, but each year, more and more companies have seen the value of implementing even the most basic asset management systems. CMMS software’s growth in importance can be explained in part as riding the waves of a perfect storm of many parallel trends. These trends include our increased fascination with technology, a worldwide effort to become more sustainable, the need for regulatory compliance, the ever-present pressure to cut costs, the rising threat of knowledge lost due to an aging and retiring workforce, and the need to better manage mounting risks. Some of these trends are positive, while others carry significant risks or trade-offs that need to be properly managed. For example, the age-old drive to automate our plants and facilities might be motivated by a significant return on investment; however, it also increases our dependence on the people, processes, and systems such as a CMMS for maintaining the more complex automated equipment. This article examines this and other key trends in the CMMS world that may impact your business.
CMMS: HUB OF A GROWING WHEEL
Companies face big challenges, including how to integrate the myriad software applications scattered throughout operations in North America and around the world. Huge opportunities exist for any company that can seamlessly assemble the many pieces of the integration puzzle. Properly integrating these islands of automation can produce significant benefits, such as increased productivity, improved asset reliability, and better decision-making capability. Over the years, CMMS vendors have expanded their core offerings beyond planning and scheduling, work management, and spare parts inventory management. Some vendors have added more sophisticated maintenance modules that cater to the more complex needs of today’s companies. Additional modules include project management, reliability-centered maintenance, condition-based maintenance, service management, procurement, mobile, safety and compliance, calibration, and 24
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many other specialized functions. In addition, core CMMS functionality has been added that caters to a growing list of asset classes and asset types that satisfy the specific needs of your industry. For example, this past decade has seen the emergence of an array of features that deal with linear assets, such as roads, railways, pipelines, transmission lines, and parks. Similarly, the core feature list has grown for managing asset types under all asset classes – e.g., plant equipment, facilities, fleet, infrastructure, and IT assets. But one of the most impressive developments is the emergence of CMMS software as the hub of a wheel of applications. As the core grows, so too does the ability of the CMMS to integrate with a massive list of external applications, from data collection systems gathering data from the shop floor and the field, to higher-level systems such as sophisticated report generators and business intelligence and decision-support tools. In addition, there’s everything in between, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) systems, Long-Term Capital Planning systems, and a host of industry-specific applications. THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT)
The idea of the CMMS as hub of a wheel of integrated applications has been advanced greatly most recently by the commercial application of the Internet of Things. The IoT refers to connecting stand-alone equipment and other “things” to the internet for gathering and receiving data. For example, a hand-held measurement device such as a multimeter or vibration monitor might be given connectivity to your CMMS through device-based software and the internet to collect condition data during an inspection. Even vehicles, facilities, and other physical assets have become “smart assets” connected through sensors, vendor software, and the internet. The CMMS industry has jumped on this massive opportunity to either collect data from source, or through some sort of data concentrator such as a programmable logic controller (PLC) or human-machine interface (HMI). Once data is analyzed by the CMMS, such as whether an upper or lower control limit is exceeded for a given condition reading, an action then can be initiated via IoT connectivity (e.g., providing on-screen follow-on instructions to the equipment operator). The excitement around IoT may explain the recent interest of large equipment manufacturers in partnering with or even acquiring CMMS WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 25
CMMS / ASSET MANAGEMENT
packages to expand their product and service offerings. In turn, IoT initiatives lead to more timely and accurate data available to maintenance and operations teams to analyze in an integrated environment and ultimately drive improved reliability and performance of what used to be proprietary equipment and systems.
• A significant schedule or scope variance such as work that takes much more/less time than estimated on a job plan • Incidents and regulatory deficiencies such as EH&S events and near misses, or audit deficiencies • Recalls or a technical bulletin issued by the OEM • An internal or external customer complaint or improvement idea
RISK MANAGEMENT
All of the excitement generated by the improved technology, interconnectivity, and systems capability tends to hide a darker trend that lurks deep under the surface of the waves. Smarter, more connected assets are significantly more complex and costly, and therefore carry greater risk if not properly maintained. Thus, the more advanced CMMS vendors have done an excellent job of adding risk management functionality. Examples are as follows: • Data security by group, role, or individual, to prevent unauthorized actions • Audit trail capability that tracks user login and logout, as well as all changes to the database • Error-checking capability for validating the format, range, or logic of data entered by the user • R isk scoring and prioritization of work orders or projects, based on multiple user-defined criteria (e.g., safety, operational, financial, and reputational risks) • Notification or alarming functionality to alert management of any anomalous situations, such as when a key performance indicator (KPI) is trending out of control • Automated workflow, such as approvals for ensuring that procedures are followed • A powerful report generator and dashboard that can filter and sort data in a manner acceptable to management and regulators
Each occurrence of the unexpected results in the opening of a case, which remains open until its disposition. Similar to the classic work-management workflow, the more sophisticated CMMS software manages cases through a number of steps, such as: • Case Initiation – describing the case, assigning a case owner, and launching any work orders to take immediate corrective action • Investigation – inputting data gathered by maintainers and engineers, attaching any relevant photos, forms, etc. • Analysis – root cause analysis using CMMS-based or external tools • R isk Scoring – determining the probability and impact of alternative remedies • Management of Change – tools to conduct a cost/benefit analysis of the following alternative fixes: (a) short-term corrective work; (b) work to prevent recurrence; (c) changes to the work program (e.g., change a maintenance policy, procedure, interval, or drawing); and (d) changes outside the work program (e.g., change the training program, signage, or equipment design) Although the case management process is relatively new to the CMMS world, it’s quickly becoming one of its most important functions for managing risk and improving the asset management work program over time.
CASE MANAGEMENT
The work management process used for managing the expected is well known, from planning, to work initiation and scheduling, to work execution and evaluation. Virtually all CMMS packages offer solutions in support of this work management process. However, not all CMMS vendors offer comprehensive software solutions for managing the unexpected. This is where both the greatest risk and most significant benefits lie – yet surprisingly, CMMS vendors have historically fallen short in dealing effectively with these events. Examples of the unexpected include: • An asset failure that occurs much earlier or later than expected, or the consequences of failure are much greater or less than anticipated • Off-normal conditions or an unexpected condition trend line • A material variance in internal or external labor, material, or other cost when comparing actual versus plan/budget, for a given project or work order 26
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MOBILE TECHNOLOGY
Progress in terms getting the most out of mobile solutions has been slow due to a number of factors. First, people must deal with many device types, brands, operating systems, and communication platforms, and technological changes are happening all the time. This makes it difficult to develop and maintain standard solutions compatible with a given CMMS package. Second, mobile computing devices such as tablets and smartphones have significantly less real estate on their screens than do laptops. This makes it impossible to use the same menu and screen layouts as those used for desktop computers. Third, connectivity via WiFi or cell technology has been problematic, especially for field workers working in remote locations. Several CMMS vendors have endured multiple rewrites of their mobile solutions to get it right. The mobile functionality must be tailored to the device type and size, the environment in which it is used, and the specific needs of the maintainer that carries the device. This is a tall order indeed, but there’s
a significant increase in productivity for those that succeed. Companies have boasted gains of 15-25% in productivity when mobile solutions are successfully implemented. Some of the features to look for on mobile devices are the ability to: • Download work orders to the mobile device, and then upload hours worked, work done, and any photos taken • Download asset history, drawings, maps, and other documents for a given asset or asset type • Download parts and tools required, and then upload what was used • Use a built-in scanner for reading barcodes or RFID tags on assets, parts, and badges • Use a built-in GPS tracker for locating maintainers, optimizing routes, and identifying asset locations • Enter and upload measures, readings, and inspection results • Enter and upload follow-on work requests (e.g., upon inspection) • Capture electronic and actual signatures (e.g., third-party approval on a work order) • Allow users to continue working on their device even when the telecommunications link has been dropped (i.e., “store and forward” capability)
if weather is an important factor in why components of the same make and model of vehicles are failing at different rates across the country. Other more sophisticated analysis tools are what-if analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), life-cycle analysis, Weibull analysis, risk analysis, regression analysis, and time series. For reporting, some CMMS vendors continue to use external software packages for more sophisticated slicing and dicing of data from multiple data tables. However, many CMMS vendors have a mix of options built into their software, including: • Listings that provide on-screen reporting of master file information, such as a list of work orders in backlog, a standard spare parts list for a given asset, and equipment hierarchy • An ad-hoc query tool that can save reports for reuse by an individual, or for public consumption, with extensive fi ltering and sorting capability as well as Boolean logic and arithmetic capability • Canned reports relevant to most companies but which can be custom-tailored to each role or a given user’s requirements, such as a schedule compliance report, mean time between failure report, and budget variance report • A dashboard feature that can display meters, stoplights, dials, graphs, ticker tapes, etc., showing user-definable KPIs,
Virtually all CMMS packages offer solutions in support of work management processes. However, not all CMMS vendors offer comprehensive software solutions for managing the unexpected.
• Record the time automatically (i.e., “running clock” capability), using either a button to start and stop the clock at the beginning and end of a job, or by accumulating time automatically whenever you select a given work order
performance targets, service levels, variances, work-order or project status, and so on, all geared to the specific needs of a role or individual CONCLUSION
Finally, mobile solutions must have an intuitive user interface. Mobile-based apps should be easy to navigate and use, with the work environment and size of the device considered in their design. The number of keystrokes necessary to perform each function should be kept to an absolute minimum by ensuring a logical workflow and screen layout, the use of predefined coded fields instead of free-form text, and plenty of navigation aids such as hyperlinks, bread crumbs, tabs, and so on. ANALYTICS AND REPORTING CAPABILITY
It seems that every year, CMMS vendors raise the bar on the quantity and quality of analysis and reporting tools. Root cause analysis tools such as Fishbone diagram, Taproot, SCAT, and other sophisticated tools are relevant to both the work-management and case-management workflows. Pareto analysis is useful for identifying recurring problems. Correlation capability is also important for understanding the relationship between two variables, such as determining
A modern CMMS is designed with the user in mind, allowing users to easily configure and navigate the system. Year after year, this is a common objective for CMMS vendors, but no easy task, given the tremendous variability in user requirements. In general, only a small fraction of the functionality of a given CMMS is ever used effectively. This remains one of the biggest opportunities for both CMMS vendors and users. For users, it’s less about which package is selected, and more about how the soft ware is implemented and used to its fullest. CMMS vendors must continue to add functionality to their soft ware, but focus on how to make it easier for users to configure, learn, and exploit its full potential for competitive advantage. Email Contributing Editor David Berger, P.Eng, executive partner and president of StraNexus Inc., at david. berger@stranexus.com. WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 27
CMMS / RELIABILITY
BY J O H N R E E V E , C R L
INVOLVE THE RELIABILITY ENGINEER IN YOUR CMMS IMPLEMENTATION Adding one more person to your stakeholder team can help you solidify your RCM vision
When organizations wonder why their CMMS system contains poor failure data, lacks analytical capabilities, and is devoid of any form of failure analysis process, it’s because the implementation team assumed the soft ware itself would magically assemble meaningful data to identify worst offenders. Some seem to think failure analysis is just a conversation, talking to the O&M technicians and rooting through work-order failure history fi les (text fields). In fact, this seems to be the first complaint by any reliability engineer when asked about failure data in the CMMS: “There’s nothing there of real value analytically, so we normally just rely on people-to-people conversations.” Although possible, it surely would not be efficient. Tribal knowledge is great, but has a way of disappearing. And it could take months of labor to root through a year’s worth of work orders looking at text fields to find the exact cause of failure. A maintenance reliability program can be broken into five pillars, one of which includes failure analysis. The CMMS soft ware is a small subset of this program. A successful maintenance reliability program has strong capabilities across all five pillars (see Figure 1). Root cause analysis (RCA) is great, but 40-60% of maintenance repair costs can be caused by chronic/ recurring failures. I refer to the latter as basic failure analysis. 28
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RCA & basic failure analysis
advanced work (P&S) management RCM analysis
defect elimination
condition monitoring (CM)
Figure 1. The five pillars of a successful maintenance reliability program.
Real analysis is needed for recurring failures. For whatever reason, many organizations are overlooking the ability of the CMMS to manage this data. And without failure data in your CMMS, all you have is an expensive workorder ticket system. If basic failure analysis as a process doesn’t exist, who’s at fault? What are the reasons for this oversight? Possible answers include: • The CMMS implementation team didn’t think they needed to have a reliability engineer on the team • The Reliability Engineer didn’t offer his or her services • A Reliability Engineer isn’t on staff • No one is familiar with basic failure analysis Let’s assume there’s a Reliability Engineer (or Reliability Team) involved. There still needs to be a solid understanding of the end game. A Pareto-style, failure analytic (report) design needs to be developed and implemented that helps the decision-makers manage by exception. Once the design is locked in, then discussion can begin on the necessary process, roles, and screen configurations to capture accurate failure data. Don’t assume the CMMS has this report. This output would help the organization drill-down through failure modes dynamically to discover true cause. With the following report in place, the Technician can tell what the failed component was – and its problem code. The Maintenance Supervisor or Engineer might be needed to identify the exact cause of the component failure. The language of RCM is tied deeply to the failure mode. Unfortunately for most CMMS products, this term isn’t emphasized. The failure mode has a three-part formula and is shown as follows:
RCM Analysis identifies failure modes and maintenance strategies
which if stored inside the CMMS enables quick comparison IDEAL CMMS DESIGN
CMMS Data Accuracy and Value-Add
Failure Data
Failure Mode
• Asset identifier • Criticality • Plant system • Installation date • Downtime • Replacement cost • Asset condition • Manufacturer • Warranty data • WO actual costs
which if captured on the work order enables quick comparison
Reliability Team IDENTIFIES REQUIRED INPUT FIELDS
DEFINES THE FAILURE ANALYTIC
Figure 2. A CMMS design that (a) embeds the RCM Analysis results, (b) captures work-order failure mode, and (c) involves a Reliability Team to validate and analyze the data, will optimize maintenance strategies over time.
Definition
Failure Mode
Failed Component + Component Problem + Cause Code
The ideal design would be to capture these three fields individually, and then concatenate them together as opposed to a prebuilt list. This approach dramatically increases the number of combinations, but with little (soft ware) setup. Every CMMS can be configured once you know the design requirements. Of course, you may need to add fields to the screen. And these fields might need a choice list to ensure validated data. Plus, you must train the staff on how and why this data is important. Figure 2 shows how to use your CMMS to solve two puzzles: (1) Provide storage for a build-as-you-go RCM Analysis result set, and (2) facilitate basic failure analysis. This innovative design permits easy comparison of work-order failure mode to RCM Analysis failure mode along with validation of maintenance strategy. Think of the number of organizations that were too scared to perform a RCM Analysis or couldn’t justify the initial cost. And, think of those organizations that started the RCM initiative but never finished. With a build-as-you-go approach, now any size organization can afford to begin optimizing its PM/PdM maintenance library with minor configuration and process improvement. In summary, I recommend the following • Involve the Reliability Engineer in the CMMS implementation. Ask what he or she wants out of the system, specifically the failure analytic. Once that is drawn up, make sure those data fields are actually being captured. Note: there can also be a situation in which the field is there, but the O&M staff doesn’t enter the data
(maybe click count is too high). • Even if implementation is over, it’s never too late to get the input of the Reliability Engineer(s). • If the Reliability Engineer doesn’t have any suggestions or shows lack of interest, then a different tactic is needed. You may need to perform a benchmarking/training/discovery session by inviting a RCM Practitioner/CMMS consultant to the site. John Reeve is a CMMS consultant, CRL qualified, who has performed his share of software implementations, but now specializes in industry best practices in support of operational excellence. He is a frequent speaker at Reliabilityweb venues, and his book Maintenance Reliability from a CMMS Perspective will be published in December 2016. He will be conducting a three-hour short course on “Failure Modes to Failure Codes” at IMC-2016. Contact John at John.Reeve@trmnet.com. WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 29
SOFTWARE / FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT
TOP 10 BENEFITS OF
FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE Purpose-built FSM software can automate and streamline the complete service process while integrating with core EAM/ERP systems By Sheila Kennedy, CMRP, contributing editor
Inside the four walls of a plant, maintenance management processes are well suited to standard asset management (EAM/CMMS) soft ware. But for geographically dispersed work, greater coordination, collaboration, and information mobility is required. Most companies have at least a first-generation system in place to handle field service scheduling, dispatch, service parts management, and perhaps some degree of mobility. Others use EAM/ERP system extensions for more robust scheduling and dispatch capabilities. The worst-case scenario is management by spreadsheets and manual processes, which hamper productivity and drive excessive costs. An increasingly popular solution is purpose-built field service management (FSM) soft ware that automates and streamlines the complete service process, provides connected and disconnected mobility, and integrates with the installed EAM/ERP system. Following are the top 10 advantages of FSM soft ware: Automation. FSM soft ware automates in a very streamlined fashion those activities that occur outside the four walls. From its robust planning and scheduling capabilities to providing the ability to adapt to changes throughout the day, it avoids the frustration and cost of wasted time and inefficient activities. Consider, for example, the installation of a large CNC machine. A precise sequence of events is required: a subcontractor pours the footings; electrical personnel run the power; an install technician arrives as the equipment is delivered, installs it to the power grid, and tests its basic capabilities; soft ware specialists configure the electronics; trainers teach the end users how to use the machine; and finally the machine is transitioned to support. FSM soft ware facilitates this type of task coordination with a dynamic scheduling engine that handles all the various planning and scheduling variables and dependencies. It takes the decisions out of the hands of a manual dispatch environment and puts them into the soft ware. 30
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Resource optimization. The assignment and routing of field personnel is optimized with FSM soft ware, which is important because this can directly affect profitability. “Dispatch optimization allows crews to do as many jobs in a day as possible. It minimizes drive time, increases productivity, and reduces emissions and fuel charges,” says Jill Feblowitz, owner of Feblowitz Energy Consulting (www.febenergy.com). For example, Source Refrigeration & HVAC (www. sourcerefrigeration.com) replaced its manual dispatch processes with an automated FSM system in order to create more efficient routes. In one region alone, service technician travel times were reduced by 35% while maintaining service level compliance. “Instead of someone calculating this information in their heads, we needed a system to determine the plan in a uniform way across all sites,” recalls Hal Kolp, vice president of information technology at Source Refrigeration & HVAC. FSM software facilitates crew selection by pushing visibility into skill sets, certifications, union work classifications, proximity, time commitments, overtime, contracted service levels, penalties for noncompliance, and other crucial factors. Coordination. FSM soft ware simplifies management of the complete field service life cycle, including the equipment, work orders, labor, service parts, warranties, returns, contracts, and projects. For example, before implementing FSM soft ware, oil and gas engineering services company T H Hill (www.thhill. com) struggled with a lack of coordination. Every step in managing a resource, from dispatch to reporting and the invoicing of the customer, was a disparate process with no standard workflows, controls, or database. “These were insurmountable problems without adding a better and consolidated tool,” explains Scott Harrison, CFO at T H Hill. Its FSM solution solved these concerns: the company attributes its 38% revenue growth in 2011, and 34% in the first seven months of 2012, to the FSM solution.
Efficiency. With FSM software, when technicians are dispatched to a job, the task is sent to their mobile device along with the most efficient route to the site, parts and tools required, service history, contacts, applicable warranties, and contractual commitments – everything needed to deliver timely and effective service. As the work is performed, the tasks are checked off on the mobile device, keeping planners and managers informed of the current status. The technicians can also record service notes, diagnostics, test results, quality information, parts consumed, and labor expended in the device, and capture as found/as left images or video using their mobile device. Equipment returns, refurbishments, depot repairs, and reverse logistics also are properly tracked and managed in an FSM solution. For instance, the software reveals when it is more cost-effective to return equipment for replacement or repairs rather than dispatching an engineer to the field. Additionally, accurate parts dispositions ensure that refurbished equipment is not scrapped or overlooked.
Oversight. When GPS tracking is enabled, oversight of field workers is improved. GPS provides validation of their precise geographic location, distance from the job site, and actual time of arrival. It can also alert when the worker travels outside of a prescribed area. Regulatory compliance is also facilitated due to the structure and consistency afforded by FSM software. From their mobile device, field users can access and transmit required regulatory information and fulfill documentation requirements, avoiding the fines and other costs of nonconformance.
Accuracy. Consolidating all FSM activity in a single tool promotes greater data and decision accuracy. For example, the tracking of inventory in the service supply chain is more precise with FSM software. Parts are recorded as they are taken from stock and also when acquired from supply houses or colleagues nearby. This encourages optimal parts placement and inventory levels, and drives supply house relationship improvements. It also facilitates work planning. “Some utilities have their work planned out so well that visits to the warehouse are infrequent. Field employees will load on the truck all the job packages needed for the week, and seldom have to return for additional equipment,” says Feblowitz.
Flexibility. With modern FSM solutions, customers can choose the deployment model that makes the best business sense for their organization. Traditionally, enterprise software was self-hosted on the premises. Today, companies can avoid or reduce their up-front capital expenditures with a cloud-based option – whether licensing the FSM application on a subscription basis, or opting for a fully managed cloud with all software and hardware hosted externally, and only the data managed on the premises.
Usability. The usability of role-based FSM software stands in stark contrast to ERP solutions, which are generalized and cumbersome with high functional and administrative overhead. For instance, in one ERP system, upwards of 14 windows are accessed to add a service part. FSM software also compares favorably to errorprone manual and spreadsheet processes that create information silos and cause dual entry. Users of ERP systems with limited Responsiveness. Lacking field service capabilities also lack an intelligent FSM solution FSM software presents real-time, optimal agility. Though ERP systems puts companies in a role-based information in an easy-tocan be programmed to do almost reactive state to inevitable understand graphical view. anything, it comes at the cost of flexchanges. Situations in the field Source: IFS ibility and responsiveness. change rapidly throughout the day, causing static work plans to degrade as soon as they are generated. Necessary parts or skill sets may be missing, or Scalability. As service processes and technologies union rules may require an additional crew member. Travel become more sophisticated and field service teams time to the site or the work duration may take longer than get larger, keeping the administration cost structure planned, the weather may not cooperate, the technician may and profit margin intact becomes more urgent. This fall ill, or a higher-priority task may arise. With FSM software is where field service automation has its greatest payback. and mobile devices offering real-time, two-way communicaFSM software mitigates the complexity of meeting growing tion, schedulers and service teams can respond quickly to customer demands and aggressive service delivery levels, dynamic circumstances and alert the customer, reorganize and balances all the moving parts that go into deploying priorities, and address any shortfalls from the field. field personnel to complete service work.
Email Contributing Editor Sheila Kennedy, CMRP, managing director of Additive Communications, at sheila@addcomm.com. WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 31
A case study involving a double-ended electric motor shows that ignoring best-in-class lubrication practices can deflect you and your facility from achieving motor reliability goals By Heinz P. Bloch, P.E.
Electric motors are considered the simplest and most widely used machines. And it would be fair to say that motor bearings and lubrication are less complicated than motor wiring, which is why the former tends to be given less attention than the latter. But both will affect motor reliability and availability; accordingly, both deserve our attention. Also, vibration and lubricant issues co-mingle, meaning that one leads to the other and the attendant issues are so interwoven that separating them makes little sense. As the case study in this article illustrates, upgrading motor lubrication often is possible, but knowing when and how to upgrade is a different matter. This case study involved a reliability professional who made it his priority to monitor machine condition on a 3,600-rpm double-ended electric motor. Others were involved in decision-making, but an owner-operator with a number of ammonia and urea plants paid a price for neglecting lubrication matters. When all is said and done, more emphasis should be given to fundamental failure avoidance. Still, this owner-operator’s reliability engineer deserves much credit for communicating his important observations. THE PLANT’S CHALLENGE: IDENTIFY THE RIGHT BALANCE OF MONITORING AND LUBRICATION
The plant’s geographic location is hot and humid; yet, blinding sand storms are known to occur at times. In this plant, a high-pressure Carbamate Pump and a Booster Pump were connected to the shaft ends of a double-ended electric motor. After the motor experienced a massive bearing failure, the reliability engineer recorded the following relevant data: 32
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• Each motor bearing housing had one vertical (X) vibration probe and one axial (Y) vibration probe. (There was no horizontal “Y” probe.) “X” and “Y” were seismic probes that resolve acceleration into vibration velocity – in/sec or mm/sec. • The motor tripped on high vibration at one of its bearings. Initially, only one vertical (X) probe reached the trip value, and the second one didn’t. After 30 seconds, both probes reached the trip value of 7.1 mm/sec, and the motor was shut down, exactly as intended. • A ll bearings were deep-groove style 6317, meaning the bearing bore was 85 mm. • The failed motor bearings showed bluish discoloration on shafts and bearing inner races, pointing to a lubrication issue. Also, there was no trace of lubricant, something which was critically important. • Th e original design intent was for automatic grease dispensing devices to lubricate these bearings; however, no such automated process was in place. The bearings were last (manually) lubricated in September, and no regreasing was done until the bearings failed in July or August of the following year after about 10 months of operation. This, too, is critically important information, as will be seen later. • After rebuilding the motor, the axial (Y) probe was repositioned (relocated) to the horizontal (Y) location. The reliability engineer at the affected plant inquired about API 670/4th ed. (2000). This American Petroleum Industry (API) Standard mentions dual-voting logic which, the reliability engineer believed, is adopted by a majority of end users. He also noted that the recently released API 670/5th ed. (2014) recommends using single-voting logic for radial vibration.
ENGINEERING / MOTORS & LUBRICATION
Based on the reliability engineer’s in-house experience, he knew that his company favored either monitoring radial vibration excursions without trip logic or, more recently, twoout-of-two voting logic. He now sought consulting advice on suitable voting logic for radial seismic acceleration/vibration monitoring of electric motors, and asked us to be mindful of management’s ever-present concerns over his facility’s operational availability and machine reliability priorities. THE CONSULTANT’S ADVICE: TREAT ROOT CAUSES, NOT SYMPTOMS
Our advice was experience-based. To have this motor “protected” with one transducer per bearing housing would be cost-justified simply because the plant already had all the associated electronic modules. However, the facility’s managers objected to using just one transducer, because of concerns about spurious trips shutting down a highly profitable plant. In this situation, we thought it would be appropriate to research the probability of spurious trips in modern installations. Also, the reliability engineer’s recollections of failing transducers may no longer pertain and might have to be updated. Alternatively, if someone in authority demanded the use of two seismic transducers per bearing housing and twoout-of-two voting logic, the reliability engineer could plan
Logic Cards in BN
Logic Cards in BN
Y OR X Hi
AND
Y OR X HiHi
AND
Y
to install these probes in the vertical (X) and horizontal (Y) directions. He should consider implementing twoout-of-two trip voting logic (Figure 1) and install the two probes in readily accessible locations on the bearing housings. Each probe may be placed at a convenient angle or at the traditional 12 and 3 o’clock locations. Encountering vibration velocity excursions should trigger an alarm if one of the two readings were to exceed 7 mm/sec. Automatic trip activation should be linked to both probes measuring an activity exceeding 7 mm/sec. A special caveat was illustrated in a so-called “orbital plot” generated by the reliability engineer’s rather sophisticated vibration monitoring system. His plot depicted an elliptical “squashed orbit” with the X-vibration probe showing much less amplitude than the Y-probe. Therefore, it’s possible that during a vibration excursion, the Y-probe could be in a trip state (i.e., “HiHi”) even as the X-probe showed normal. Over the years, we’ve found that if one end of a rotor is in distress, the other end should show at least some change from normal. While the output might not be in a “HiHi” alarm state on the non-distressed end, that end should at least be showing a “Hi” alarm on one of its vibration probes. Of course, more cards would have to be installed in the electronic monitoring rack for this kind of exploration.
Y OR X HiHi Y OR X Hi Y
X
Orbit Plot
X VIB PROBES
VIB PROBES
ROTOR Drive End
Non Drive End
SQUASHED ORBIT NOT ABLE TO VOTE “TWO-OUT-OF-TWO” AT EACH END Figure 1. This figure shows a squashed orbit with the X-vibration probe showing much less amplitude than the Y-probe. Therefore, it’s possible that during a vibration excursion, the Y-probe could be in a trip state (HiHi), and the X-probe showing normal. Over the years, we’ve found that if one end of a rotor is in distress, the other end should show some change from normal. It might not be in a HiHi alarm state on the non-distressed end, but it should at least show a Hi alarm on one of its vibration probes, hence the logic diagram shown. It’s a bit more costly, because more cards have to be installed in the Bently Nevada monitor, but it’s worth it.
WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 33
ENGINEERING / MOTORS & LUBRICATION
EXPERIENCE WITH DIFFERENT LUBRICATION TECHNOLOGIES
It’s understandable that a facility would make the case for more vibration monitoring; however, we thought this large ammonia/urea plant would do well making its priorities reliable bearings and lubrication. Vibration monitoring (hopefully) lets us know when there’s a problem; sound best-in-class lubrication and lubricant application strategies prevent problems from developing in the first place. It should be self-evident that lack of lubrication will cause bearings to fail. Periodic and frequent re-lubrication is needed on plants interested in high electric-motor reliability. However, manual re-lubrication is expensive when done properly – and even more expensive when it involves neglect. Reliability professionals should study and adopt only best-available bearing selection, and, if cost-justified, partial or plantwide automated lubrication strategies. In this instance, the plant’s top and mid-level managers should be briefed on why dry sump (“pure”) oil mist has been successfully used on rolling element bearings by bestin-class companies since about 1965. An estimated 27,000 electric motors are equipped with dry sump (“pure”) oil mist as of 2016. When we last asked one experienced oil mist user (in 2014), we were told that some of the motors so lubricated have not needed bearing replacement in the time period from 1977 until 2014 – at least 37 years. A major electric motor manufacturer (Siemens1) allows oil mist in motors up to 3,000 kW. Unless the bearings are lubricated by oil mist, best-in-class companies usually disallow rolling element bearings for electric motors above 400 kW. But this rule-of-thumb should be applied only on rolling element bearings being re-lubricated with traditional greases. Lifetime-lubricated rolling element bearings with sealedin perfluoropolyether (PFPE) greases offer an important lubrication alternative for plants that are unable to guarantee proper re-lubrication of their open or shielded motor bearings.2 Facilities insisting on mineral oil based greases must obey re-lubrication rules and schedules. Here, details
This article is excerpted and condensed from Bloch’s most recent book, Petrochemical Machinery Insights, published by Elsevier Publishing, Oxford, U.K. and its U.S. imprint Butterworth-Heinemann, Cambridge, MA, and is available now.
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Figure 2. A circulating oil system can be used to upgrade to superior bearing lubrication in mid-size machines. Source: AESSEAL, Inc., Rotherham, UK, and Rockford, TN.
on automatically or manually applied grease lubrication are important, and these details will differ with the location and orientation of shields (if any) and drain ports.2,3 There’s considerable reliability impact depending on the type of grease. In addition, certain grease application methods sometimes result in wrong fill volume, excessive grease pressure (which can deflect bearing shields), rust or dust in bearing element paths, and bearing flat spots (in an installed spare pump set) due to shafts not being rotated, to name just a few. Again, proper greasing procedures and lubrication management are far more important than placing, mounting, and maintaining more monitors on a rolling elementequipped motor bearing housing. The 3,600-rpm electric motor in this case study was equipped with 85-mm bearings. Shaft peripheral speeds are high on this relatively large motor. With grease relubrication, an 85-mm bearing becomes maintenanceintensive because it will require grease replenishment at least six and, in some cases 16, times per year. However, the reliability engineer had reported that no re-lubrication had been performed in the 10 months before the motor’s massive failure. A massive failure often is explained by rivet heads popping off in a riveted-cage bearing. Should this happen, the motor can grind to a halt in mere seconds. We referred the reliability engineer to an article4 describing how oil mist can be used on many electric motor bearings – an article that was obviously written decades ago and still the best available technology today. Why this company wasn’t availing itself of oil mist lubrication1 or pumparound circulating oil lubrication (see Figure 2) is difficult to comprehend. The one sure thing we know about achieving reliability is that it can’t be obtained with business-as-usual mindsets and lots of manual labor. EVIDENCE OF OUTDATED LUBRICATION TECHNOLOGY IN THIS INSTANCE
We were now ready to zero-in on the real problems as we saw them. First, the reliability engineer was probably only responsible for vibration monitoring and analysis tasks. His assignment may be limited in scope, and he may not be able to tell higher management that we believe his company is vulnerable in its use of old lubrication technology.
However, it’s our belief that the plant team must identify the sources and initiators of persistent deviations from long and reliable operational performance of machines. They also must adopt a stance that refuses merely to treat the symptoms of premature equipment distress. Instead, the team members must make it their goal to firmly establish the root causes of deviations. In this instance, the root causes of bearing failures were not addressed by vibration monitoring; indeed, failure was inevitable when the re-lubrication needs of these rolling element bearings were disregarded. Good asset management pays attention to lubrication strategies that reduce reliance on the human element. Perhaps someone at this ammonia/urea plant will give thought to the matter by thinking about what happened at this facility: 1. Using mineral oil-based grease and not observing the required replenishing intervals for this grease leaves the plant vulnerable 2. U sing application methods that were discontinued by best-in-class companies in the early- to mid-1960s leaves room for upgrade opportunities Finally, reliability professionals must become agents for permanent change, not purveyors of temporary solutions or advocates of more and more monitoring. Proper motor lubrication vastly reduces the need for vibration monitoring, and failure elimination is always better than hoping to catch component degradation at just the right time. Heinz P. Bloch, P.E., is owner of Process Machinery Consulting (www.heinzbloch.com) in Westminster, Colorado, and the author of more than 660 articles and 20 books, including Pump User’s Handbook – Life Extension and Practical Lubrication for Industrial Facilities. Some of his work has been translated into five foreign languages, and Bloch has seven machinery-related patents to his credit. He is an ASME Life Fellow and was one of the original Texas A&M University Pump Symposium Advisory Board members. Contact him at heinzpbloch@gmail.com. REFERENCES 1. Bloch, Heinz P., and Abdus Shamim. Oil Mist Lubrication: Practical Applications, 1998. Fairmont Publishing Company, Lilburn, GA. ISBN 0-88173-256-7. 2. Bloch, Heinz P. Petrochemical Machinery Insights, 2017. Elsevier Publishing, Oxford, UK and its U.S. imprint Butterworth-Heinemann, Cambridge, MA. ISBN 978-0-12809272-9. 3. Bannister, Kenneth, and Heinz P. Bloch. Practical Lubrication for Industrial Facilities, 3rd ed., 2017. Fairmont Publishing Company, Lilburn, GA. ISBN 0-88173-761-5. 4. Bloch, Heinz P. “Dry Sump Oil Mist Lubrication for Electric Motors,” Hydrocarbon Processing, March 1977.
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PLANT MANAGEMENT / RISK MITIGATION
Are You Protected?
Industry regulations and standards do matter, but sometimes insurance is calling the shots BY SHEILA KENNEDY, CMRP, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
The human, property, environmental, and reputational toll of asset failure can be difficult to stomach, but the risk is ever present in assetintensive industries. Effective reliability-based maintenance programs mitigate the threats by improving the safety and uptime of critical assets and allowing for timely scheduling of repairs. Insurance policies, on the other hand, protect against economic losses should an incident occur. The role of insurance in reliability decisions is becoming increasingly prominent. Catastrophic losses can lead to sharp increases in insurance premiums or outright cancellation of the policy, and ill-defined coverage or misunderstandings can lead to expensive litigation to settle coverage disputes. To avoid issues of this nature, asset owners are working with their insurance providers to ensure adequate coverage. For example, California-based food and beverage manufacturer The Wonderful Company is covered fully for fixed and mobile asset losses and liabilities, says Bob Kazar, director
When The Wonderful Company installed a new oil-storage building in California, the insurance company required additional spill protection in the form of a 6-inch raised floor to accommodate overflow from the original containment under the tanks. Source: The Wonderful Company
WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 37
PLANT MANAGEMENT / RISK MITIGATION
Source: SAP
Insurers want to see that their policyholders have risks under control.
of reliability and operational excellence at The Wonderful Company (www.wonderful.com). At the same time, insurers and policyholders are taking a closer look at asset reliability programs. The importance of these programs as a means to save lives and protect property and the environment cannot be overestimated. RELIABILITY PROGRAM DRIVERS ARE EVOLVING
Asset reliability programs are commonly recognized for their financial and operational benefits, and they’re implemented with these results in mind. The traditional drivers of reliability programs are establishing a competitive advantage within the given industry, lowering maintenance costs, and extending equipment life cycles, says Terry Harris, president of Reliable Process Solutions (RPS) (www.rpslive.com). Attention to the programs also can be reactionary. “Normally, any major incident such as a production loss based on a technical failure leads to thinking about doing some more reliability work. It is often pretty much event driven,” remarks Achim Krüger, vice president of operational excellence solutions at SAP (www.sap.com). 38
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Whether proactive or reactive, risk management is more important than ever in our technology-focused world. “The increasing dependency on equipment by Operations can create substantial business exposure,” says Buddy Lee, reliability subject matter expert at FacileX. “Unfortunately, not everyone understands what can go wrong with the equipment or what the replacement cost will be.” The Deepwater Horizon event is the poster child for expensive industrial losses, says Lee. The Transocean oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 while drilling a BP well, triggering an oil spill that would become the worst in U.S. history. In September 2014, a federal judge ruled that the discharge of oil was the result of BP’s gross negligence and willful misconduct, describing BP’s actions as “reckless” and saying that Transocean’s and Halliburton’s actions were “negligent.” “BP was self-insured at the time. Transocean apparently had named BP as additional insured under its $750 million insurance policy for the rig, but BP’s interest in that policy was thrown out of court,” remarks Lee. By July 2016, BP’s liability for the spill had reached nearly $62 billion.
Another example is the 2010 explosion of a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) natural gas transmission pipeline that leveled a San Bruno neighborhood in California, killing eight people. Federal investigators determined that PG&E’s violation of recordkeeping regulations and flawed maintenance contributed to the disaster. The company had nearly $1 billion in fire insurance to cover liabilities from that blast. “Arguably, the worst possible way to start a reliability program is in a reactionary state with little to no resources and political power granted only by proximity to a recent disaster. Yet, many successful programs have been implemented specifically in reaction to an event,” says Lee. PROACTIVE ACTIONS BY POLICYHOLDERS
Some asset owners are using their reliability programs as a way to reduce insurance premiums. Frontrunner companies that approach asset management from a broader perspective are looking for the best levers to negotiate with insurance providers, says SAP’s Krüger. “Insurance is all about risk, so the thinking is, if I can document my overall asset management systems, not from an IT sense but from a management sense, and I have all of my risks under control, then I can negotiate with my insurer about lower rates,” he explains. This is already being done by some SAP customers. “A couple of years ago, I met (people from) an Australian utility that successfully negotiated its insurance rates with Lloyd’s of London based on their asset management documentation. At that point in time, it was quite stunning to me, but I see it is coming up more and more,” remarks Krüger. Another big influence he sees is the ISO 55001 assetmanagement standard. Insurers may not make certification an imperative, but they want to see that their policyholders have risks under control and that there’s a certain maturity level in the organization in how they’re doing asset management. “I see this definitely coming up in rail, utilities, oil and gas, and chemicals, but I’m not seeing it in discrete manufacturing. I think it’s because that industry still focuses on ‘maintenance’ as part of operations rather than ‘asset management’ more holistically,” says Krüger. The Wonderful Company’s Kazar points to Pacific Gas & Electric as an example. In his view, “PG&E recently implemented ISO 55001 in part because it has been a part of many lawsuits due to asset failures that endangered the lives of California citizens,” he explains. PG&E President Chris Johns credited efforts “to transform the safety and reliability of our gas system and earn back the trust of our customers” in a May 2014 press release announcing its certification. DIRECTIVES FROM INSURANCE PROVIDERS AND REGULATORS
Regulators such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) mandate discipline in risk management. Insurance providers seek proof of regulatory
compliance, and some add their own rules and reliability practices to their policies. “Equipment breakdown insurance, formerly called boiler and machinery insurance, protects an organization from breakdowns in electrical infrastructure and key pieces of business equipment that are relied upon for productivity. By law, boilers and pressure vessels are required to be inspected periodically. So are certain devices, such as air-conditioning systems in New York City,” says FacileX’s Lee. “Insurance providers have offered premium discounts for predictive maintenance programs for several years,” Lee adds. “While I am not an insurance agent, it would make sense that insurance companies have expanded these programs to the reliability and asset management functions.” What Kazar has seen is more attention to detail in assuring the assets meet specific criteria for their intended function. “When The Wonderful Company installed a new oil-storage building (Sea-Can) in California, the insurance company required additional spill protection in the form of a 6-inch raised floor to accommodate overflow from the original containment under the tanks. An upgrade to the building’s fire suppression system was also necessary before the insurer would sign off,” says Kazar. Insurance companies also are doing more investigations and research around preventive and predictive maintenance and their effect on losses, reports RPS’ Harris. “They are asking more questions after failures to make sure companies are doing effective PMs to prevent major failures and losses, and they are actually even looking at the original design and installation as a cause of failure,” he explains. For example, it was proven in the BP Texas City refinery explosion that PMs were missed or not performed, which led to some of the root causes of the incident, explains Harris. “I have been called by law firms and insurance providers to testify against plants that lack effective PMs, which may have caused major losses such as fires or explosions. However, I have never taken such a case since it would affect my future work in the industry,” remarks Harris. EVERY INDUSTRY IS DIFFERENT
The type and amount of coverage needed depends on the specific industry and use of the equipment. Airline operators are pretty regulated, so they get all sorts of procedures from aircraft manufacturers they must prove are being followed; otherwise, they’ll lose their certificate of airworthiness, says SAP’s Krüger. “In a mine, you have a different degree of freedom. You are more in the driver’s seat to decide the maintenance strategy,” adds Krüger. “This also applies to facilities where the operator has some responsibility for the design, such as a refinery, in which there are all sorts of components where you can get recommendations from the manufacturer, but the overall setup at the end of the day WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 39
Frontrunner companies are looking for the best levers to negotiate with insurance providers.
is governed by the operator on the production line. That strongly influences how much the operator has to think about what can be done to reduce costs, but also to reduce risk. That also strongly influences the documentation needs for their insurance company.” The Wonderful Company’s Kazar says: “In the food manufacturing and building materials industries where I have worked, insurance companies have exercised very little influence on reliability programs. I believe insurance will become a bigger player over time, but insurance company influence over reliability programs will be slow in the United States.” The need for a production increase or quality improvement is the main driver for a reliability program in these industries, says Kazar. “However, I would say 50% of those cases are not actually a reliability issue at all. Instead, a combination of standard operating procedures and training usually delivers the required results.” Kazar notes that food audits such as AIB International and Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) have had a great positive impact on reliability by supporting necessary efforts to improve procedures and processes impacting food safety. 40
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OSHA issues and audits also have had a positive impact on assisting reliability programs. CONCLUSION
Reliability is truly a win-win-win for an industrial plant. “I believe that some industries are starting to make the connection that a reliable plant is a safer plant, that reliability impacts sustainability since environmental releases are reduced, and reliability impacts the costs of goods sold by reducing the maintenance component of costs and improving throughput, so products are made with first-pass quality,” observes FacileX’s Lee. Maintaining a working relationship with your insurance provider is key, advises Kazar. “Utilize your corporate insurance manager for all communications with the insurance company. This ensures that you are working with the right corporate teams, keeping everyone in the loop, and avoiding any missteps.” Email Contributing Editor Sheila Kennedy, CMRP, managing director of Additive Communications, at sheila@addcomm.com.
Source: SAP
PLANT MANAGEMENT / RISK MITIGATION
PRODUCT ROUNDUP
SAFETY SOLUTIONS Find the equipment you need to put a proper safety program in place PROVING UNIT TO REDUCE RISK OF SHOCK AND ARC FLASH
The Fluke PRV240 Proving Unit provides a safe and convenient method for “test before touch” (TBT) verification of electrical test tools without placing the electrician or technician in potentially hazardous electrical environments. Three-point TBT verification of electrical test tools – verify the test tool is working properly before conducting a test, take the test, verify after the test – is an important safety development now required by GS38 and NFPA 70E work practices. Use of the PRV240 reduces the risk of shock and arc flash compared to verification of test instruments on high-energy sources in potentially hazardous electrical environments, because the PRV240 provides a known voltage in a controlled, low-current state in accordance with safe work practices. Fluke www.fluke.com ATEX-CERTIFIED NEEDLE SCALERS
The Trelawny ATEX Vibro-Lo series is designed for all surfaces – metal and masonry – to remove coatings and corrosion and clean other accumulated materials. Models VL203Ex, VL223Ex and VL303Ex are ATEX-certified Ex II 2 Gc IIA T4 for use where hazardous, flammable, or combustible vapors, gases, or mists are present and surface temperatures do not exceed 275°F (135°C). This series produces 7x less vibration than traditional needle scalers to reduce operator fatigue, increase efficiency, and help prevent injury. CS Unitec www.csunitec.com ARC FLASH RISK ASSESSMENT SERVICE
Brady’s Arc Flash Risk Assessment services bring Brady’s licensed engineers on-site to perform an arc-flash risk assessment and identify areas for improvement. After an initial
kickoff meeting, a licensed Brady engineer collects and audits arc-flash program data, including electrical equipment, conductor lengths and ampacities, overcurrent protection device ratings, and more. This data is entered into a power-system analysis software to create an electrical system single-line diagram. From there, Brady’s engineer creates a risk-assessment report and installs the corresponding labels. Brady Corporation www.bradycorp.com EMERGENCY SHOWER DECONTAMINATION BOOTH
HEMCO Emergency Shower/Decontamination Booths are fully assembled and ready for installation to water supply and waste systems. The shower is molded in one-piece, seamless, chemical-resistant fiberglass and is equipped with a pull-rod activated shower and push-handle eye/face wash for immediately drenching of personnel that have been exposed to hazardous chemicals. Shower is equipped with frosted front-strip curtains, interior grab bars, raised deck grating, and bottom or rear drain outlet. Booths comply with ANSI and OSHA requirements. HEMCO Corporation www.hemcocorp.com INDUSTRIAL SMOKE DETECTOR
The Det-Tronics SmokeWatch U5015 detector is a Class I Division 1, 2 and Zone 1 explosionproof rated smoke detector designed for hazardous, industrial, and commercial applications. The detector operates effectively in both smoldering and rapidly growing fires and is appropriate for either large, integrated environments or for smaller installations. The SmokeWatch U5015 can be integrated into processcontrol systems or a conventional fire panel through outputs that include 0-20 mA, a localized LED, and relays. Det-Tronics www.det-tronics.com WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM NOVEMBER 2016 41
PRODUCT ROUNDUP SAFETY LIGHT CURTAINS
NONCONTACT SAFETY SWITCHES
AutomationDirect’s Contrinex safety curtains are used for human protection and product/machine safety where risks cannot be eliminated by machine design and the process might require open and frequent access. AutomationDirect’s line of Contrinex safety light curtains, in 14 mm resolution for finger protection and 30mm resolution for hand protection, have a protective operating distance up to 3.5 m, and 30 mm resolution curtains have a range up to 12 m.
The OMEGA LPC/LMC, CPC/CMC, SPC/SMC Series of coded noncontact safety switches offer top quality construction, universal designs, coded magnetic actuation, and a NEMA PW12 (IP69K) rating to fit a wide range of factory automation applications. Switches are designed to interlock hinged, sliding, or removable machine guard doors in factory automation applications, and can provide an input to a safety PLC to initiate machine shutdown in an emergency situation.
Automation Direct www.automationdirect.com NONSKID COATING
KiwiGrip durable, nonskid coating offers a high-traction surface. By varying the application technique, the texture can be adjusted from a rolled texture to an aggressive texture. As a homogeneous material, KiwiGrip doesn’t suffer from problems encountered with products filled with sand, walnut shells, beads, rubber fleck, or other fillers. PYI Inc. www.kiwigrip.com DRAW BAR COVER FOR VERTICAL MILL OPERATORS
Vertical mills are essential cutting tools in machine shops used to remove material from the surface of metal workpieces. To bring needed safety to the shop floor, Rockford Systems has created a Draw Bar Cover to protect vertical mill workers from rotating shafts 7 ft or less from the floor or working platform. It guards the turning draw bar with a nonrotating, smooth, welded-steel enclosure, secured firmly to the mill with a ring magnet and safety anchor chain, and it complies with OSHA safety regulations for proper safeguarding of equipment. Rockford Systems www.rockfordsystems.com
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Omega Engineering www.omega.com LED DOOR LIGHTS
Rite-Hite’s LED Virtual Vision lights allow workers to “see” through the door with red LED lights that indicate when another worker or object is approaching the door from the other side. The light communication system uses a motion sensor on each side of the door. When the sensors detect an object approaching the door area, a strip of red light emitting diodes (LEDs) begin flashing on the opposite side of the door. This system is an alternative to – or can be the perfect complement to – high-speed doors that use clear plastic vision panels. Rite-Hite www.ritehite.com ARCFIT FACE SHIELD
Elvex Corporation introduces the ArcFit 14 Face Shield, which offers a better-designed chin guard or better protection and increased head mobility. The lowprofile design provides added comfort with extended protection and greater range of head movement. The arc shield features dual-sided anti-fog and anti-scratch coatings, providing long service life and unobstructed vision even in extreme temperatures. Elvex Corporation www.elvex.com
MRO MARKETPLACE YOUR SAFETY PROGRAM STARTS HERE
HAND HELD VIBRATION FFT
Occupational Safety and Health provides an overview of potential workplace hazards, necessary safety practices, and how various processes need to be managed in order to maintain a safe workplace. This reference is designed for use in introductory safety courses and by professionals who want to advance in the field as well as individuals who need to understand and implement safety programs. 708-957-1100 x304 • www.atplearning.com American Technical Publishers
VibChecker is a light and compact-sized instrument for vibration measurement in the 10-1000 Hz frequency range. Measurement results are immediately and automatically evaluated against ISO standards. Green - yellow - red LEDs indicate vibration severity and a real time FFT spectrum is produced for easy pattern recognition. Results can be stored for documentation and follow-up. VibChecker is an all set to go instrument; just point the probe and measure to locate vibration-related problems. 800-505-5636 • www.spminstrument.com SPM Instrument
AIR SAVING BLOWOFF IS SUPER QUIET
YOUR DIAMOND DECADE STARTS TODAY
The low cost Super Air Knife dramatically reduces compressed air usage and noise when compared to other blowoffs. It delivers a uniform sheet of laminar airflow with hard-hitting force across the entire length. Many sizes in aluminum, Type 303 stainless steel, Type 316 stainless steel and PVDF. Applications include blowing liquid, chips, and contaminant from parts and conveyors, cooling hot parts and air screening. 800-903-9247 • www.exair.com/85/123.htm EXAIR Corporation
As an industry leader in rotary screw design, Sullair offers the market’s most comprehensive warranty on new compressors. The exclusive Diamond Warranty provides – 10 years air end protection, 5 years coverage on key components – main motor, aftercooler, oil cooler, separator vessel and variable speed drive (if equipped). Contact your local Sullair distributor for more information. 218-879-5451 or 1-800-Sullair http://www.sullairinfo.com/diamond/ Sullair
HIGH-PURITY COMPRESSED AIR
12,000 HOUR ROTARY SCREW COMPRESSOR OIL
By incorporating a charcoal absorption element, this filter offers a standard 0.01 micron rating with flow ranges of 50, 75, or 100 scfm and pressure ratings to 250 psi. The SuperStar 0.01 filter serves an extensive array of applications that require the highest standards of compressed air. 800-348-2463 www.laman.com La-Man Corp.
Summit Ultima Series…a high performance lubricant formulated to outperform other synthetic compressor lubricants. Ultima’s unique formulation allows for better compressor performance, and compatibility with existing O.E.M. lubricants. Ultima Series last up to 12,000 hours under normal operating conditions, and provides better thermal conductivity for lower operating temps. Summit Ultima Series protects your compressor against mechanical stress, reduces power consumption and eliminates varnish, sludge and carbon deposits. 800-749-5823 • www.klsummit.com Summit
RELIABLE MOTOR TESTING CAN MINIMIZE UNPLANNED DOWNTIME Identify motor insulation weaknesses before they can cause premature motor failure and costly unplanned downtime. SKF’s Baker AWA-IV portable motor analyzers are reliable, user-programmable instruments that positively identify insulation and circuit problems that lead to motor failure. To learn more, call 970-282-1200 or visit us online at www.skfusa.com/electricmotortesting today!
MAINTENANCE
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CLASSIFIEDS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
ADVERTISER INDEX Ajustco . . . . . . . . . . . . . Allied Electronics . . . . . . ARC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Atlas Copco Compressors AutomationDirect.com . . . Azima DLI . . . . . . . . . . . Baldor Electric Co. . . . . . Deublin . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gorman-Rupp. . . . . . . . .
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35 . 6 36 12 . 2 16 10 35 14
Kaeser Compressors . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Life Cycle Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Lubriplate Lubricants . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Newell Rubbermaid. . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Rabalais Instrument & Electrical Constructors . . . . . . . . . 48 SKF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 United Rental Service . . . . . . . . . . . 13
United States Postal Service Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation (Requester Publications Only) Publication Title: PLANT SERVICES Publication Number: 0199-8013 Filing Date: 9/25/16 Issue Frequency: Monthly Number of Issues Published Annually: 12 Annual Subscription Price: $96.00 Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication (Not printer) (Street, city, county, state, and ZIP +4): 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053, Contact Person: Jeremy Clark, Telephone: 630-467-1300 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher (Not printer): 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053 9. Full Name and Complete Mailing Address of Publisher: Mike Brenner, 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053 Editor in Chief and Managing Editor: Thomas Wilk, 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053, Christine LaFave Grace, 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053 10. Owner (If the publication is owned by a corporation, give the name and address of the corporation immediately followed by the names and addresses of all stockholders owning or holding 1 percent or more of the total amount of stock. If not owned by a corporation, give the names and addresses of the individual owners. If owned by a partnership or other unincorporated firm, give its name and address as well as those of each individual owner. If the publication is published by a nonprofi t organization, give its name and address.) Putman Media, Inc. 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053 John M. Cappelletti 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053 Jenny G. Cappelletti 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053 Nicholas G. Cappelletti 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053 Melody L. Cappelletti 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173-6053 11. Known Bondholders, Mortagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgagees, or Other Securities. None If none, check box 12. Tax Status (For completion by nonprofi t organizations authorized to mail at nonprofi t rates( (Check one) The purpose, function, and nonprofi t status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes: Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months 13. Publication Title: Plant Services 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: September 2016
(4) Requested Copies Distributed by Other Mail Classes through the USPS c. Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation [Sum of 15b. (1), (2), (3), and (4)]
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months
56,075
5,492
338
5,830
56,075
51,230
61,905
63,574
g. Copies Not Distributed 832
819
h. Total (Sum of 15f and g) 62,737
64,393
i. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (15c divided by f times 100) 90.58%
80.58%
16. Electronic Copy Circulation a. Requested and Paid Electronic Copies 15,145
14,041
b. Total Requested and Paid Print Copies (Line 15C) + Requested/Paid Electronic Copies 71,220
65,271
c. Total Requested Copy Distribution (Line 15f) + Requested/Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a) 77,050
77,615
d. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (Both Print & Electronic Copies (16b divided by 16c i 100) 92.43%
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84.09%
17. Publication of Statement of Ownership for a Requester Publication is required and will be printed in the November 2016 issue of this publication. 18. Signature and Title of Editor, Publisher, Business Manager, or Owner Jeremy L. Clark, VP of Circulation Date 9/25/16 I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/ or civil sanctions (including civil penalties). PS Form 3526-R
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12,344
f. Total Distribution (Sum of 15c. and e.)
51,230
(2) In-County Paid /Requested Mail Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541. (Include direct written request from recipient, telemarketing and Internet requests from recipient, paid subscriptions including nominal rate subscriptions, employer requests, advertiser’s proof and exchange copies). (3) Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid or Requested Distribution Outside USPS
1,625
e. Total Non-requested Distribution (Sum of 15d (1), (2), and (3))
15. Extent and Nature of Circulation a. Total Number of Copies (Net press run) 62,737
10,719
(2) In-County Non-requested Copies Stated on Form 3541 (include Sample copies, Requests Over 3 years old, Requests induced by a Premium, Bulk Sales and Requests including Association Requests, Names obtained from Business Directories, Lists, and other sources (3) Non-requested Copies distributed Through the USPS by Other classes of Mail (e.g. First-Class Mail, Non-requestor Copies mailed in excess of 10% Limit mailed at Standard Mail or Package Services Rates) (4) Requested Copies Distributed Outside the Mail (Include Pickup stands, Trade shows, Showrooms and Other Sources)
No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Data
b. Legitimate Paid and/or Requested Distribution (By Mail and Outside the Mail) (1) Outside County Paid /Requested Mail Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541. (Include direct written request from recipient, telemarketing and Internet requests from recipient, paid subscriptions including nominal rate subscriptions, employer requests, advertiser’s proof and exchange copies).
51,230
d. Non-requested Distribution (By Mail and Outside the Mail) (1) Outside-County Non-requested Copies Stated on Form 3541 (include Sample copies, Requests Over 3 years old, Requests induced by a Premium, Bulk Sales and Requests including Association Requests, Names obtained from Business Directories, Lists, and other sources)
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BIG PICTURE INTERVIEW
MANUFACTURING IS GETTING SPEED-SMART New technologies are accelerating the shift to smarter, more nimble production Martin Hardwick is president of STEP Tools (www.steptools.com), a Troy, New York-based technology company working to help manufacturers make machining more efficient. The company’s Smart Machining Twin, which it is piloting with a small group of clients this year, lets users access a website offering real-time machine performance data and guidance on how to optimize machine efficiency while putting minimal wear and tear on the machine. STEP Tools also is a member of the Chicagobased Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII, www.dmdii.uilabs.org).
PS We hear a lot about increasing demands for production flexibility. As someone on the software and controls side of things, what’s your take? MH Tooling is becoming more sophisticated, and demand is becoming more variable; people need to adjust. Driving a machine tool is a bit like driving a car. You can drive from New York City to Washington, D.C., as fast as possible if you need to be there as quickly as possible. But on the other hand, if you’ve got lots of time, it makes more sense to reduce the speed and go as gently as possible to maximize fuel and to reduce the wear on the car. The question is, how can you do that? You need to know how to control the accelerator. In manufacturing, people have been crude about (speed control) for many years. They just fix the speed and use that. What you really want to be able to do is adjust it according to circumstances. Just like with a car – you can go faster, as long as you’re not going in a tight corner; you can go slower, as long as the engine’s not going to stall. The questions are, when would it stall, and where would it spin off the road? With recent developments in computer technology, we can measure the tolerances as we’re machining. PS How does that play into what you’re doing at STEP Tools? MH Now that we can share manufacturing information in
real time, what we’ve done with the Smart Machining Twin is connect a website to the machine tool so there’s this interactive, ongoing simulation of the machining while it’s happening. What that does is allows the operator to go and check out whether or not everything’s correct; it allows the owner to take a look at what the current state of the machining is; and it allows third parties like cutter vendors to get in there and say, “Hey, we think we’ve got a much better solution with our new cutter here; let me show you what would happen.” 46
NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM
Today, cutter vendors can go and do a site visit, take a look at what’s happening, and make a suggestion for a better solution. But now, you’re talking about the cost of airfare and highly skilled people’s time and that sort of thing. So you can only really afford to do that if you know you’re going to be making a massive number of parts. With something like the Smart Machining Twin, they can see what’s going on via a website. They can just dial in, take a look, and the same experts who previously would have gotten on a plane can instead take a look at it (remotely), and also the experts no longer need to know quite so much, because the twin can do an awful lot of the advising. The enabler has been the reduction in cost of computing power. Now, in the time the machine is doing a single operation, you can do about two billion computations on a desktop machine. So you can do an awful lot of runtime checking that wasn’t previously possible. The question is, how does that become usable on the shop floor? We think we’ve hit on it with digital twins and interactive run-time simulation. PS You’re a small company – 10 employees based in upstate New York. What value does being part of a national manufacturing innovation collaborative like DMDII bring you? MH Project management and facilitating connections are two of the top benefits (of DMDII membership) for us. I think our partnership with DMDII really is only just beginning. Now I anticipate we’ll be working closely together to get DMDII technology deployed into member companies. The main value of all of this is it’s making people believe that manufacturing can now change. A small organization such as STEP Tools on its own doesn’t have much hope of making such a sea change. But now that all of these initiatives are ongoing … folks can see that it’s got to happen, and now’s the time to invest in it.
Powering Up! At Rabalais I & E Constructors, our focus is on bringing you the power and controls to manage your power generation, petroleum, petrochemical, manufacturing, compressor station or solar/wind energy projects quickly. We are the industry leader in providing electrical and instrumentation services to the nation’s most notable companies. Our team of dedicated professionals has decades of experience in managing your needs. From temporary power to permanent, state of the art, cost-efficient instrumentation solutions, there’s just no substitute for experience. • Design/Build Capability • Primary & Secondary Systems • Ground Testing/Certification • Cathodic Protection • Generator Systems • Teldata/Fiber Optics • Panel Fabrication & Upgrades • Lighting, Security, Access Controls • Distributive Control Systems • System Integration
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