A much underused source of data for Maintenance management in facilities with live production monitoring capabilities is the wealth of information, both live and historic; such systems are capable of delivering. This may be because the decision to install such monitoring is by definition a Production commitment. One of the most efficient ways of running planned maintenance is on an hours run or cyclic basis where production data is the obvious monitoring source. Many production monitoring systems have advance notification capabilities that programmed appropriately can provide maintenance planning the necessary notice of impending scheduled work. This requires (limited) Maintenance access to production monitoring ‘live’ data initially to pick up notifications, but additionally to enable them to re-forecast completed works. From the maintenance planning viewpoint a printout or viewing access to hours consumed on a weekly or monthly basis assists in JIT provision of any maintenance spares required for scheduled works. From a Condition Monitoring and energy efficiency angle production monitoring systems are invaluable and again seldom used to their full potential. Certainly on ‘critical’ equipment current consumption can be recorded and trended (over time and with production loading and rpm). In the simplified example above one would expect to see current drawn having a direct relationship to increased loading or RPM. However, in section ‘X’ the relationship alters and there is a gradual increase in current drawn against a steady state of production conditions; such a pattern serves as an indication that the motors condition is deteriorating. The key to any Condition Based Maintenance strategy is the trending of information and production monitoring systems have that capability and whilst the example may not be particularly sophisticated measure it nonetheless provides a potentially valuable tool in establishing and monitoring deterioration in performance. Parameters that can potentially indicate machine

deterioration include… RPM Cycle time Pressure Temperature Moisture levels In fault diagnosis the ability to interrogate production monitoring systems is again a potentially valuable tool to the maintenance department. Essentially there are four root causes for machine breakdown… Deterioration Wrong from the start Something has changed Human intervention Deterioration we have already covered. The most common problems both of which can and usually are captured by production monitoring systems are those of changes (typically speed alterations) and human intervention (typically speed, tolerance or loading). Whilst it should never happen; machines that might be wrong from the start (usually set up from day one to run outside their OEM design limitations) can as a contingency be monitored for increased rates of deterioration. Summary Production monitoring systems have the capability to deliver valuable and concise data to Maintenance in four distinct areas: Scheduling on hours run or cyclic programmes Condition monitoring as part of a Condition Based Maintenance strategy Fault diagnosis – provision of hard evidence (symptoms and trended deterioration) Source data for energy monitoring programmes Where production monitoring (http://plantrun.co.uk) is installed it is often seen exclusively as a production tool, yet it has an often unappreciated and untapped capacity to enhance many aspects of asset maintenance. CSA have implemented cost effective reliability centred maintenance programs for many leading manufacturers. For a no obligation initial chat and an indication as to cost; please complete the form and we will be happy to contact you to discuss how we may be able to help you. form_enquiry...(Read whole article/video)