CMMS: Web Based Application for Maintenance

CMMS is short for Computerized Maintenance Management System. Web based CMMS software programs help public and private organizations manage their maintenance from any location, by logging onto the Internet. Most of them provide features such as work orders, tracking and controlling of inventory, maintenance histories, costs and schedules of maintenance by the hour.

A web based CMMS uses a web browser to access the program. A true web based CMMS system does not require any third party or download program. The program is designed to operate from a central server and the database itself, from another. The more powerful systems require specialized hardware and software to function.

A web based CMMS offers the end user many benefits. Low cost, easy to maintain client and server components, and a user-friendly web browser are the salient features of a web based CMMS. It also offers remote system access with open architecture and interfaces. A very important feature is the web browser itself. They include copy and paste features along with e-mail and help systems. Security and history settings are also available.

A wide array of industries have switched over to using web based CMMS programs. Companies have been able to find new ways to deliver applications across their networks in a more efficient and cost effective manner. Web based CMMS can streamline software delivery and offers a centralized data repository for accessing and analyzing real time data. The cost savings involved are enormous and hence justify the initial investment in the package.

Preventive Maintenance As A Clever Cost-Cutting Process

So many managers in factories and hotels treat maintenance as a necessary evil. The cost of engineers and technicians, who look after and repair the equipment, is considered a burden that deprives the entity of extra profit. In these entities, one often finds the maintenance personnel, “fighting fires” all the time. They tend to serve those who either stand high in the hierarchy or those who shout the loudest.

The lack of an organised maintenance effort brings about a lot of wasted time, time that is preciously limited and time that costs a lot of money. Studies taken in such workplaces showed that a maintenance technician only spends around 25 per cent of work-time actually on the job solving problems. The rest of the time (75 per cent) is spent looking for spare parts, going to and from the work-site (several times), getting permits to start work and on other similar non-productive work.

Change is always difficult to make and changing operating procedures and mentality even more so. The change required here is to gradually move from reactive maintenance (fighting fires technique) to proactive maintenance (preventing the fires in the first place). Proactive maintenance is more commonly referred to as Preventive Maintenance. This can be achieved through short- and long-term maintenance planning. Employing the help of software improves the chances of success drastically.

A Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is software dedicated to improving the efficiency, organisation and effectiveness of the maintenance section. A good CMMS is capable of keeping track of repairs done on equipment or machinery, alerts maintenance personnel on when preventive maintenance is due, plans and schedules jobs to personnel who have the skill to do the job in question, makes sure that required parts are ordered in time for maintenance to take place and other similar organising functionalities.

The use of a CMMS can improve maintenance personnel efficiency to 55 per cent or even more. This means that a maintenance person is capable of doing more than twice the amount of work that used to be done before. It often results that as more time is available to the maintenance section, work that used to be outsourced will be handled in-house, further reducing costs, building better in-house skills while affecting maintenance in a shorter time.

A CMMS application also helps reduce the frustration felt by maintenance persons who might feel that the lack of organisation in their department makes them look inefficient in the eyes of their clients. It creates a pride of being professional through planning and efficient handling of maintenance. It improves production, as downtime is reduced. Maintenance can be planned weeks ahead and the necessary arrangements for reassigning production workers to other chores in the factory can be done with ease.

Long-term benefits of using a CMMS is that equipment and machinery lifetime is extended through the proper implementation of preventive maintenance. This in itself reduces the cost of re-investing earned profit into new machines.

Decision taking is also made easier with the data provided by such an application. Data on each and every machine’s repairs and maintenance is recorded. When the question of whether to repair or replace comes up, a more informed decision can be taken.

With all of these benefits, one wonders why so many entities overlook such an application. Reasons vary from the lack of understanding of the benefits such an application provides to the fear that such an application would cost the earth. On the other hand, while it is true that most CMMS software cost too much to be implemented in SMEs, there exist systems aimed at such entity sizes that are more affordable and still offer a good return on investment .

Technology has come a long way and the use for cost cutting and improved bottom line is a clever way towards moving closer to success.

Source: maltabusinessweekly.com | Carmelo Romano

PdM News: R&M Offers HoistMonitor To Improve Efficiency

R&M Material Handling is now offering HoistMonitor as part of the option list for its RX and QX quick delivery programmes, to improve end-user efficiency.

HoistMonitor is built into a hoist’s electrical panel and supervises and records key data from the hoist. This allows for more efficient planning and scheduling of predictive maintenance, inspections and repairs, R&M said. The data can be accessed directly from the HoistMonitor or from a keypad display in the pendant station when equipped with HoistMonitor Plus.

“Predictive maintenance is a reality for efficient operations on the shop floor,” said a spokesperson for R&M. “Knowing when important maintenance milestones will occur allows you to schedule service during non-working hours.

“Planning hoist repairs and inspections decreases downtime while increasing performance.”

Source: hoistmagazine.com | 16 November 2009

Predictive Maintenance Finally Gets Wide Adoption

With the need to push costs down, plants are implementing condition-monitoring systems.

At the LyondellBasell Industries oil refinery in Houston, a condition-monitoring program has changed the way the company manages maintenance. Now, instead of gathering readings on paper reports that never get reviewed, plant operators collect data on handheld electronic devices, aggregate the data and track trends that can indicate a problem.

A faulty seal or broken pump can lead to a costly production interruption. “Now, operators have an actual reading from devices,” says Mark Fisher, operations reliability supervisor at LyondellBasell. “If the reading is above a certain limit, they’re prompted to tell their maintenance folks so they can prevent a catastrophic shutdown. The readings allow us to fix things before they break.”

Before implementing a Wonderware IntelaTrac system, the plant took temperature and vibration readings on paper. “You can’t trend on a piece of paper,” says Fisher. “The supervisor would set up a big pile of run sheets in a three-ring binder. By the time anyone got around to looking at them, it was too late to take any action in a timely manner.”

He notes that the paper reporting didn’t include specific data ranges to indicate problems. “With the paper system, one operator would look at the reading and see something wrong, while another operator would see it as OK.” With the handheld data readings, a note will pop up on the screen when the range is exceeded, prompting a call for maintenance. “We lose the inconsistency,” says Fisher.

Big brother?

Fisher notes that there was resistance to the new system initially. “At first, operators were skeptical. They thought it was Big Brother.” That changed when operators started to detect fans that weren’t working and seals that were plugged—problems that had gone undetected with the paper system.

Plants are turning to condition monitoring to reduce costs and replace the knowledge of baby-boomer engineers who are about to retire. Some are implementing predictive tools in-house, while others outsource it to software companies or original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Many plant operators are just now getting around to implementing condition-monitoring technology that’s existed in their control systems for years. Ease-of-use portals and dashboards are helping resistant workers switch to monitoring technology. Condition monitoring includes a number of analytical tools, including vibration monitoring, oil analysis, temperature monitoring and infrared imaging. They share one thing in common—collecting data on plant equipment and analyzing the data to see when things are out of whack. Sophisticated condition monitoring can also catch subtle aspects of equipment performance. “It may not be the temperature that’s the issue, but that it’s rising quickly,” says Colin Shearer, senior vice president of strategic analytics at SBSS Inc., an analytic software company in Chicago.

For some companies, predictive maintenance has become a boardroom issue. “There are companies that consider condition monitoring a strategic advantage,” says Tom Alford, product manager, integrated condition monitoring at vendor Rockwell Automation Inc, in Milwaukee. “One power-generation company called out condition monitoring in its annual report as part of the company’s strategic vision.”

The recession has encouraged the use of predictive maintenance tools. The tools are becoming more popular as plants struggle to extend the life of their equipment and optimize equipment operation in the midst of a severe downturn. Plants can no longer afford scheduled maintenance—which often means replacing something that’s not broken—or the costly fix-it-when-it-breaks maintenance strategies.

With the pressure to drive down costs, many manufacturers turn to technology they already have on hand but haven’t implemented. “Since we’re having a slowdown in capital projects, they’re starting to use the products that they bought in the past,” says Rich Chmielewski, manager for PCS7 at Siemens Industry Inc., in Alpharetta, Ga. “We’re getting questions about reporting and diagnostics. Our customers are starting to use technology they’ve had but haven’t been using.”

Making Connections

Much of the infrastructure of predictive maintenance systems has been in play for years. Plants already use smart devices that can sense temperature and vibration. They’re also using a fieldbus network that transmits the device data. “You take the data from smart devices and smart control valves, and you send it along the Hart and fieldbus communication and networking systems,” says Stuart Harris, general manager of the Plant Asset Management business at Emerson Process Management, an Austin, Texas, automation supplier. “You take all that data and apply reliability analytics to see the efficiency of the equipment. Then you combine predictive diagnostics with decision support to make the connection with performance.”

One of the biggest hurdles to adopting condition monitoring is getting people to change long-held maintenance practices. “How do you get away from fix-it-when-it’s-broke? A lot of people are stuck in that type of maintenance,” says Emerson’s Harris. “You stop doing some things in routine maintenance that don’t add a lot of value. Then you identify opportunities for bringing in technology that avoids things getting broke.”

The best transition from old-style maintenance to condition monitoring is gradual. “Maintenance is cultural. In many organizations, the effectiveness of maintenance is measured by how quickly they fix machines when they break rather than measuring the overall cost of maintenance,” says Jonathan Hakim, president of Azima DLI, a
condition-monitoring company in Woburn, Mass. “Either that, or it’s measured on ‘Do I perform all my planned maintenance on time?’ To be effective, condition monitoring has to be combined with a move away from planned maintenance.”

Some plants implement monitoring one piece of equipment at a time, so the data collection and analysis in a broad changeover doesn’t stymie the change. “The idea is to give people the right information to collect,” says Jim Frider, manager of mobile solutions at Invensys Operations Management (Wonderware) in Lake Forest, Calif. “You have to know what’s too much data and what’s too little. That helps to get operators on board, which is always challenging.”

Portals, dashboards and benchmarking have helped ease the switchover to predictive maintenance and condition monitoring tools. “Advances in predictive maintenance have less to do with new technology than with new ways to bring the data to the user,” says Bill Polk, research director at AMR Research Inc., in Boston. “It’s how you see the preventive maintenance data that’s important. It’s now aggregated and put into portals.”

Outsourced Monitoring

Some plants turn to equipment OEMs, control vendors or software companies to run their condition monitoring programs. These maintenance monitoring contracts can make predictive maintenance affordable for mid-size to small manufacturers. Some control vendors contract with plants to run their maintenance remotely. A program designed and run by Houston-based vendor ABB Inc. came in handy for Vale Inco’s Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in Labrador, Canada, a site that is more than 150 miles from the nearest road. The Toronto-based company needed to know in advance when a part might fail, because turnaround on spare parts shipments is counted in days, not hours.

To make things more difficult, the mine was a greenfield site, so there was no historical data to indicate acceptable data ranges on the equipment. ABB also had to teach the condition-monitoring program to plant engineers. “That was relatively easy, since it was greenfield,” says Jeff Vasel, global asset optimization manager at ABB. “Change management is easier when you start with people who are new to maintenance.”

ABB monitors the site’s equipment remotely. “I can access their site right now. We monitor heat exchangers, control loops, even the electric flow. We also track vibration and ultrasonics,” says Vasel. “We are able to predict when a pump or motor will fail within 40 hours. Since we can’t get equipment up there quickly, we have to know when the parts will fail so we can have them at the site when it happens.”

The outsourced model has delivered tangible benefits to small and mid-size companies that can’t afford pricy in-house monitoring and analytical systems. “The small manufacturers are getting the same benefits the large end-users are getting,” says Shaun Kneller, account manager at vendor B&R Industrial Automation Corp., in Roswell, Ga. “So the small guys are able to avoid scheduled maintenance. Instead of replacing a bearing every month, they’re replacing it every six months.”

Brain Mapping

The brain drain has also prompted adoption of condition monitoring. The most knowledgeable plant engineers are retiring over the next few years. One way to capture their expertise is to program it into plant technology. “The gray hair brigade is reaching maturity and it’s tough to get new blood in because plants aren’t as sexy as high tech,” says Barry Lynch, a manager with the Proficy Maintenance Gateway at GE Fanuc Intelligent Systems, a Charlottesville, Va., automation supplier. “We’re basically taking the knowledge of the mature workers and pouring it into the IT (information technology) rules. You capture their intellectual property and digitize it.”

As well as digitizing the expertise to keep an individual plant’s equipment running efficiently, the best practices derived from knowledgeable workers can be converted into benchmarks or best practices. “The expertise on how to solve equipment problems lives with a field force of people nearing retirement,” says Brian Anderson, vice president of marketing at Axeda Corp., Foxboro, Mass., which provides remote monitoring services. “You can capture their knowledge and turn it into rules. Then you can use that expertise on a global basis.”

Whether it’s on the control dashboard or outsourced to a vendor, predictive maintenance and control monitoring is seeing widespread adoption in the last couple of years. The economic downturn has prompted tough cost-cutting measures, which means the end of the old and costly “fix-it-when-it-breaks” maintenance mentality. Those who produce predictive maintenance tools have overcome resistance to adoption with easy-to-use dashboards or by taking on the chore themselves.

Source: Rob Spiegel, Contributing Editor | November 2009

Predictive Maintenance Technology Using Fluke Ti25 IR Infrared Thermal Imaging Camera

The Fluke Ti25 is an industry leading infrared camera system. The Ti 25 is the ultimate tool for troubleshooting, preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance. This thermal Imager is the perfect tool to add to your problem solving arsenal. Built for tough work environments, this high performance, fully radiometric infrared camera is ideal for troubleshooting electrical installations, electro mechanical equipment, process equipment, HVAC/R equipment and others.

Companies use infrared for both predictive maintenance programs and diagnostics tools. Processing manufacturing has many pieces of equipment that can literally cost thousands of dollars every hour of downtime. With infrared companies can predict well in advance any problems that may be on the horizon. The return on investment for an infrared program is usually meet after only a few detections of potential problems.

The Fluke Ti25 features Fluke's patented IR fusion capabilities. IR fusion allows the user to blend both the infrared and visual light image. IR fusion ability allows the user to diagnose problems more effectively and efficiently. Other features include; a thermal sensitivity of just 100mk, 160x120 resolution, instant high low spot meters, sixty second voice annotation, seven different color palettes, a six hundred and ninety two degree temperature range, an industry leading two year warranty, and Smart View 2.1 software with all future upgrades of the software for free. This is all backed by Fluke's award winning customer service and un matched product durability.

Recently the Fluke Ti25 recently won an award from Plant Engineering magazine for product of the year. Different manufactures entered several different models, and the Ti25 took the award.