Condition Monitoring/Predictive Maintenance

Andy Anthony, Operations Director with Monitran, discusses the importance of vibration sensor selection, placement and use for condition-based predictive maintenance.

In the December issue of Engineering Maintenance Solutions Donald Lyon, MD of Monitran, explained how cost-effective condition-based predictive maintenance (PM) strategies can be formed around the intelligence gathered from vibration monitoring and analysis. 

To continue where we ended part I of this series of articles about lean maintenance, I like to give an example on the impact of reliability in a situation where you can not sell everything you manufacture as a result of increased reliability. The example also shows the importance of including the quality component of the reliability formula.  

In a pharmaceutical industry there was a lot of over capacity and it was thought that manufacturing reliability wasn

An effective root cause analysis process can improve production reliability significantly.  But, few organizations have a functioning root cause analysis process in place.  This article will discuss common problems and some suggested solutions in order to improve root cause problem elimination.

Don

The water industry is increasingly turning to predictive maintenance as it addresses the challenge of improving asset performance.  Artesis has successfully combined advanced technology with a cost-effective implementation to meet their current and future needs.

The nature of the challenge: There is an increasing pressure on water companies to maximise the performance of their physical assets, a critical factor in optimising shareholder value and customer service.  The water industry regulator (Ofwat) reviews the prices that companies charge, and takes into account the benefits of the capital investments planned and improvements in operating efficiency. 

The Acoustic Emission (AE) technique is based on the detection of the high frequency component of naturally occurring stress waves (or structure borne elastic waves). There was a time when AE was regarded only as a means of monitoring defect growth in stressed materials and structures. Despite numerous instances of its successful application to machinery condition monitoring since the 1960

~ Success due to customer focused implementation ~ Leicester based Cressall Resistors has put in a place a lean programme, managed by manufacturing director Cy Wilkinson, that has helped increase turnover by 100 per cent in 18 months. It has also contributed to the successful integration of a business, valued at over a million pounds, into the company's Leicester facility. The resultant plant layout uses less floor space than the original did before the new company was integrated.

The fundamental strategy was formed through the use of eight lean tools: value stream mapping, 5S, standard work, flow, pull, TPM (Total Productive Maintenance), mistake proofing and set-up reduction.

Energy savings, especially in the current economic climate are high on the agenda of all industry sectors, so components which offer, amongst other features, a precise and economical performance, are likely to be the preferred choice. Deltaflow flow meters recently introduced by FLOWLINE, meet these requirements for measuring media in gas, steam and liquid applications.

Deltaflow is a differential pressure probe which measures the flow in pipes and conduits and can be used to meter gases, steams and liquids under almost any operating conditions and across a broad spectrum of industries.  

The emergence of onboard sensor technology and usage is clearly at hand and ever expanding. Sensors represent a dynamic, long-term paradigm shift in the way oil is and will be analyzed. Tracing the history of oil analysis will help us understand how this came about and, perhaps, where it might lead.

In the beginning: The first serious inspection efforts were made in laboratories

Until 15th December 2008, Fluke is offering a free Pressure Module to purchasers of a Fluke HART

Working with equipment manufacturers, hydraulic system designers and maintenance engineers, one of the key factors for Parker Filtration