Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Does A Condition Based Maintenance Program Have A Role At A Bottled Water Plant?

What would life be like if the manufacturing plant that supplies your favorite brand of soft drink, beer or bottled water lost power due to a major failure of their power distribution equipment?  They probably have a generous supply of inventory to meet the immediate customer demand; but, what if they experience a three-to-four week downtime due to this failure?  Could the plant’s reliability team have predicted when a critical electrical system was deteriorating and fix it before it fails?  The answer is probably YES!

Companies should conduct a power distribution asset condition assessment to understand the relative health of their critical and essential infrastructure.  Some companies will have backup generators to keep the power flowing.  However, those backup generators need to be inspected and maintained to insure proper functionality should the need arise and may not protect from all types of equipment failure.

Use of Condition Based Maintenance Programs

These industries recognize the criticality of establishing and performing Condition Based Maintenance Programs on their electrical assets. Routine inspections enable personnel to monitor the health status of critical electrical components and systems.  Innovative products and services, called Electrical Maintenance Safety Devices (EMSDs), enable personnel to perform routine electrical inspections of energized assets safely and efficiently.  Common types of EMSDs include Maintenance Inspection Windows with Infrared or Infrared and Ultrasound capabilities, Ultrasound Ports and handheld measuring devices, Wireless Temperature Monitoring Systems and Intelligent Asset Tagging Systems Utilizing these tools within a Condition Based Maintenance Program allows the reliability team to routinely and safely perform inspections, collect data, monitor data over time and determine if an electrical asset is starting to deteriorate. These programs allow companies to schedule downtime to fix the asset versus experiencing an unplanned outage and disrupting the company’s operations that will impact revenue and profits.

Conclusion:

A thorough analysis of a company’s risks associated with a critical asset failure must be performed to determine if the adoption of a Condition Based Maintenance Program would manage and mitigate failure risks.  Employee safety is a primary concern; and, the bottom line revenue and profit/loss statements are also important.  Costs of implementing a Condition Based Maintenance program versus costs associated with an unplanned failure and prolonged downtime play a critical part in the analysis.