ISA 2012 Automation Week Track: Asset Performance Thursday, 27 September, 9:30-11:00 am, Room 204C Jeremy Pollard Programmable Controller Support Systems My mum had a great expression: “Don't go around chasing your tail!” What she really meant was, you really should stop and examine what it is you are doing and why. Hard for a 16-year-old to comprehend! I always used to say to her, “I don't have the time to stop and think about it.” Common refrain this day I would suspect. We are trying to do more with less, be safer by default, be more efficient to earn more money for the shareholders, and of course do our job with as much gusto as we need to to keep our jobs, and to keep our companies running and profitable so they do not disappear. Maintenance is an overhead—most would agree.
But if you could reduce your expenses by buying a better product which lasted longer, and did not require ongoing maintenance, well you would buy it, wouldn't you? A pipe dream I'm sure, but we CAN get more out of the products, equipment, and operations than we are now. Preventative maintenance is an idea well past its time. We have smart motors, but they are not cheap. We have sensor networks, but we have to design for them. With these technological innovations, we can make dollar gains and make maintenance part of the efficiency and cost solution, instead of a drain.
Predictive, adaptive maintenance approaches will save you money. These processes will make you a hero because you will be able to identify issues before they strike, to reduce unscheduled downtime and events. Processes and discrete controls vary so much that each solution is and will be unique as such. So how can you the user, grasp the concepts of predictive maintenance, and the relationship between it and SCADA and the control elements? Pre-emptive strikes against process failures, in my opinion, is the same as predictive action or actions. If vibration monitoring tells you the bearings are starting to go, it is predicting failure.
That is where SCADA and historian databases come into play. Pre-emptive suggests that you can fix the problem before it happens. Predictive is the same, because you cannot fix the motor bearings while working. SCADA provides the process babysitting and observation tools to access data from the complete process so you can use it to predict and be proactive in maintenance. While every process and application is different, I will make the case for why you should do it, and how some simple steps can begin your trek down the predictive maintenance path.
As a general rule, the most successful person in life is the person who has the best information!
