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Within the industrial equipment markets and the O&G sector, the concept of predictive maintenance (PdM) is becoming an ever-more recognized path towards improving industrial equipment upkeep.
Advanced predictive maintenance and asset management: Meeting today's challenges
While most industries already have a well-practiced mix of service and preventive maintenance (PM) program — including internal teams, external shops, planned turnovers, and fix-when-broke emergent work — a predictive maintenance approach can pull these practices towards another level of effectiveness and make a significant difference across a company’s profitability.
For example, the benefits of a predictive approach can provide a number of advantages to best cover the needs of any operations team, including:
- Improve purchasing efficiencies and lead time coordination in a COVID-disrupted supply chain
- Maintain operational balance to keep one’s profit centers at max uptime
- Streamline capital forecasting
What is a predictive maintenance program?
When making the shift to a more-proactive process, it is widely suggested that a Predictive Maintenance approach balance two criteria – first, robust data (asset) definition, and equally important, specialized input from the service crews on site.
Advanced predictive maintenance and asset management: Meeting today's challenges
Data alone can frame the program and track results; however, each facility and piece of equipment runs at different demands. The service team feedback provides the necessary information to customize the solution to fit a real-world application. Put another way, the use of AI-supplied data or a facility’s parts purchase history needs to be combined with actual equipment demands in order to provide an optimal solution.
Equipment-facing technicians and OEM service providers can fill the experience gap to provide the insight on how to implement these systems, so merging these well is a key part of PdM execution.
When to implement a predictive maintenance program
The reach of predictive maintenance planning is expanding as industrial equipment servicers mark their ability to reduce costs and streamline outage planning. According to a recent assessment and forecast by Vantage Market Research, the global predictive maintenance market is projected to grow by over $30 billion in the next six years. When looking at a variety of industries, the increase in job titles is another indication that describes the shift. Companies are now resourcing this role to build models that can provide results.
Another key contributor to strong preventive maintenance is a facility or multi-facility asset management program. After all, the first data to collect is 1) What do I have? and 2) Where is it?
Equipment manufacturers provide asset management expertise
“As we’ve developed new product solutions to meet our customers technical needs, we also realized, with the quality of our tower structure and lifecycle, we need to cover product demands across 50 years of towers still operating,” explained Robert Swafford, channel manager for SPX Cooling & Marley® Cooling Towers.
Advanced predictive maintenance and asset management: Meeting today's challenges
“With closer asset management, we can offer the best-priced component for the operator’s need. And, most importantly, have it ready when they need it,” Swafford said. “We find our improved methods of asset management is our best answer to predictive maintenance and supporting our customers’ uptime.”
For cooling towers, maintenance will always be necessary, but understanding how long each replacement part is expected to last can better help operators predict when replacement time will rear its head.
Gearboxes in cooling towers, for example, are known to require rebuilding every 15-20 years which is a considerable window of time; however, by combining data from the manufacturer with real-world service parameters, operators can better predict when their gearboxes will need to be serviced, rebuilt or replaced, to help eliminate the often-untimely capital expense of replacement and the cooling tower shut down that comes with it.
“We have data from 90+ years in the field that suggests that Marley Geareducer® will last anywhere from 25-30 years, depending on service, where other manufacturer’s gearboxes tend to only last 10-15 years,” Swafford said.
Where should you start?
To get started on a predictive maintenance plan, begin by examining your existing plan and determining places where you could improve performance. For cooling equipment and to learn more about how the Marley team can assist with asset management, visit spxcooling.com.
