Plant Services - July 2008 - (Page 33)

Condition Monitoring RELIABILITY Plant emerging solutions for advanced maintenance techniques that complement condition-monitoring systems but operate as a generic, or “hardware independent,” layer of software. In Meridium’s words, they provide “a much broader scope of data that isn’t tied to a specific hardware manufacturer.” Large sites that back their maintenance staffs with reliability engineering are familiar with methodologies such as reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA). Based on those methods, Ivara puts data in the context of work flows in a unified database environment that can connect to each activity and source of asset health, including “ maintenance and operator inspections, predictive technologies like vibration and lubricant analysis, as well as integration to online sources such as data historians and supervisory control and data acquisition systems,” says Eric Wegscheider, director of product marketing for Ivara. “We bridge the divide between these different islands of data that you’ve already got and bring them together into one supporting platform.” SmartSignal’s EPI*Center software also serves large, often continuous process-industry sites involving tens of thousands of asset data points. It doesn’t replace systems from Ivara or OSIsoft or others, but can augment them (FP-b) 7-08:MatHandProdNews (FP) 9-06 7/2/08 Serviceswith advanced modeling and pattern-recognition tools that expand “to a tremendous degree” the analysis of “anything that can be measured with any kind of sensors or instrumentation,” says David Bell, vice president of application engineering. Vendors offer tools, but none of them are as important to an organization as the up-front study of its own assets, models of its own work flows, and understanding its operating environment. Along with greater uptime and asset performance, better control of processes can reclaim lost dollars in the form of reduced scrap, better-tuned loops (in process applications) and less variation in product quality. PM activities often are reduced, but many organizations replace them with human input of the lion’s share of data. The greater efficiency improvement is by reducing unplanned work and, in turn, overtime labor, as well as spare parts inventory. Most importantly, critical failures can be prevented, preserving the business from costly or catastrophic results to its bottom line, operations or human safety. By advancing CBM and the greater goals of integrated maintenance in the enterprise, Johnston says, “We can’t necessarily solve world hunger, but we can certainly help people solve a much Page 1 1:48 PM bigger portion of their overall challenges.” Conditional benefits � � Better � � Safer � � More Productive Pick any three. WHATEVER THE CHALLENGE, GORBEL CRANES ARE UP TO THE TASK. IMTS Bo t oth D-4369 See us a July 2008 www.PLANTSERVICES.com 33 http://www.gorbel.com http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Plant Services - July 2008

Plant Services - July 2008 Contents From the Editor Letters The PS Files Up and Running Crisis Corner Asset Manager Technology Toolbox Cover Story Compressors Power Transmission Flooring Web Hunter In the Trenches Product Picks Classifieds Energy Expert

Plant Services - July 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.