Food Processing - August 2008 - (Page 41)

Maintenance is moving from preventive to predictive mode with condition monitoring, maintenance system upgrades and the promise of easier integration. If It AIn’t Broke … ant to save $616,500 a year on a couple of sets of bearings? Consider this simple math problem: Johnsonville Sausage LLC had nine checkweighers on which the $55 bearings (50 per machine) were wearing out every two weeks [$55 x 50 bearings x 9 machines x 26 replacements per year = $643,500 per year]. The maintenance guy replaced them with $75 bearings that lasted 15 months each [$75 x 50 bearings x 9 machines x 0.8 replacements per year = $27,000 per year]. “And that doesn’t include my team’s labor,” says Tom Ehrenberg, engineering systems analyst at the Johnsonville, Wis., sausage company. “I wouldn’t have noticed the repair and purchasing history without the trending and analysis of a CMMS [computerized maintenance management system],” he says. In his case, it was the MaintiMizer from Ashcom Technologies Inc. (www.thecmms.com). For more than two decades, the maintenance profession has undergone an evolution from fixing equipment when it breaks to preventing failures to predicting when problems will occur. The results are lower risks to products, productivity and people working in the plant. Working in a predictive maintenance (PdM) environment can provide this kind of early warning. But not everything needs to be predicted; some assets are more cost-effectively maintained by other means. Plants must consider the three alternative approaches to maintenance for any given foodprocessing.com W asset. According to David Berger, partner in Western Management Consultants, Toronto, they are: 1. Failure-based maintenance (FBM): An asset is run until it fails, at which point it’s repaired or replaced. Depending on the asset, this approach can be hugely economical (e.g., light bulbs), or highly expensive or even life threatening (e.g., large rotating equipment). 2. Use-based maintenance (UBM): An asset is maintained on a periodic or metered basis such as every three months or 10,000 gallons of use. In many cases, this is a more economical approach than FBM, especially when the consequences or cost of running equipment to failure are higher than the cost of the UBM program. 3. Condition-based maintenance (CBM): Triggers are established that correlate to impending equipment degradation or failure. When these conditions are identified through periodic inspections or monitoring, defensive actions are taken, such as repair or replacement of a part, to pre-empt the failure just in time. “There are always three choices for maintaining a piece of equipment,” Berger says. No matter the size or sophistication of reliability engineering and failure modes studies, “The same kinds of fundamental questions apply in any context: What does the asset do? What happens if it fails? What program can we put in place that can cost-effectively ensure its reliability?” Because of the expense of bringing monitoring technology to bear in data-gathering and historical trend analysis, CBM is August 2008 food processing • 41 http://www.thecmms.com http://foodprocessing.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Food Processing - August 2008

Food Processing - August 2008 Contents Editor’s Plate NewsBites Special Report Rollout Food Biz Kids The Top 100 Ingredients Show Report Plant Operations MRO Q&A Case History New Supplier Products Toops Scoops

Food Processing - August 2008

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