Plant-wide Condition Monitoring

In addition to the most important assets found in industrial facilities, there are often a host of “supporting” assets that make up the balance of the plant such as pumps, motors, blowers, heat exchangers, fans, and others. This auxiliary or plant-wide equipment may be spared or sacrificed, and its impact on the process stream may vary from moderate to minor. Regardless, such machines—just like their more highly important counterparts—can benefit from Condition Monitoring. Condition Monitoring provides affordable, effective portable and permanent condition monitoring solutions that are delivering tangible benefits for tens of thousands of customers around the globe.

Financial Justification

For many assets, failure can mean substantial or total loss of production, often worth millions per day. Or it can lead to the release of hazardous substances, fires, and even explosions— resulting in a severe safety hazard as well as fines for violating environmental regulations.

Maintenance Costs

When viewed on a per-asset basis, maintenance costs for plant-wide assets can appear modest. However, when viewed collectively across the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of assets in a typical plant, these costs can be appreciable. Reducing the maintenance costs on each asset through effective condition monitoring—even by a mere 10%—has a large impact on plant profitability. Condition Monitoring is a planning tool that allows more effective insight in planning and asset management, allowing maintenance to be done in advance of a functional failure.

Things to think about as you move towards Predictive Maintenance:

• 90% of failures are NOT time-based.
• 50% of companies site maintenance and reliability as a top priority.
• It costs 6x as much for unplanned events vs. planned maintenance in process industries.
• A 60% estimated increase in environmental, health and safety spending among global exploration & production companies.
• 50% of workforce to retire in the next 5 to 10 years. Knowledge & experience is not being transferred.

Potential impact of a conditioning monitoring program and the move towards Predictive Maintenance:

• -70% Machinery breakdowns 
• -40% Plant downtime
• -50% Maintenance costs
• +25% Production

For more information on Plant-wide Condition Monitoring, contact Classic Controls by calling 863-644-3642 or visit their web site at https://classiccontrols.com.

Asset Condition Monitoring Can Reduce Unplanned Outages and Improve Profitability

Model 3500 Rack Mount Monitoring Unit
Courtesy GE Bently Nevada

Lost industrial production and unplanned plant outages can be unbelievably costly.

Asset condition monitoring, as the name implies, is the process of continually monitoring a machine or piece of equipment with the intent to predict mechanical wear or failure point. Key indicators of failing equipment are changing values in vibration, noise, and temperature, all of which are measurable with the right equipment. Monitoring these variables, key indicators of machine operating health, provides valuable data which can be analyzed. By evaluating trends in the data, intelligent systems can provide useful information about the equipment and asset, such as early detection of possible faults or failures. The goal is to take preventative, less costly, measures, rather than clean up after an outright failure.

Continuously monitoring critical asset parameters such as vibration, temperature, speed, and numerous other condition indicators is a proven method for anticipating and preventing mechanical failures—proven in tens of thousands of industrial facilities around the world by delivering tangible benefits such as:

• Improved protection from catastrophic failures
• Better machinery reliability/availability
• Fewer process interruptions
• Enhanced maintenance/outage planning
• Lower maintenance and repair costs
• Longer intervals between outages
• Reduced insurance premiums

Implementation of asset condition monitoring is benefiting manufacturing plants and process industries such as chemical, petrochemical, pulp & paper, power generation, wind turbines, and oil & gas. Not only can it save money from protecting against unplanned outages, but condition monitoring also improves productivity, quality, and profitability.

GE's Bently Nevada 3500 Monitoring System provides continuous, online monitoring suitable for machinery protection and asset condition monitoring applications. It represents a capable and flexible system in a traditional rack-based design, offering numerous features and advantages not provided in other systems.

Share your equipment monitoring requirements and challenges, large and small, with application specialists. The combination of your process and facilities knowledge, with their product application expertise, will produce effective solutions.

Industrial Machinery and Asset Condition Monitoring from Classic Controls, Inc.