Manufacturing Journalist Looks at Predictive Maintenance for SEARCH Magazine

In the Fall issue of SEARCH Magazine, manufacturing journalist TR Cutler notes, “Predictive maintenance techniques are widely employed by manufacturers to prevent unscheduled machine downtime, by collecting and analyzing data on equipment conditions. However, it has been found that traditional methods of collecting data often fail to provide accurate key performance indicators (KPIs) for predictive maintenance. And these drawbacks in traditional methods of measurements highlight the need for automated productivity metrics like statistical process control and overall equipment effectiveness that not only alert firms about failures and process changes but also provide real-time, actionable, decision support analysis, thereby facilitating prompt corrective actions.”

Predictive maintenance must be flexible, so it adapts easily to data collection scenarios such as:

• Measuring a variety of features using multiple devices or data sources as per manufacturers’ choice
• Locking down the workflow, so that a manufacturer can control how data entry is used
• Measuring multiple features, at one time, from a variety of sources
• Automatically triggering data collection after a set period of time or after a certain number of machine cycles
• Automatically collecting data with no human intervention

Flexible data storage

If process data comes from numerous sources or is not permanently stored in another system, manufacturers can use the database as the warehouse for process data.

However, if process data is already stored in a data warehouse, it need not be stored again in the SPC database. SPC solutions must be able to collect data from an existing warehouse, notifying the manufacturer of any problems or process changes, display charts and statistics for the data. Both methods alert firms to failures and process changes, so prompt corrective action may be taken.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE ) measurement, as the name suggests, is aimed at improving the effectiveness of equipment. Since equipment effectiveness affects shop floor employees the most, it is essential for them to be involved in tracking the OEE and also planning and implementing equipment improvements to reduce lost effectiveness.

About TR Cutler, Inc.:

TR Cutler, Inc. (www.trcutlerinc.com) was founded by Thomas R. Cutler a decade ago. Cutler maintains extraordinary relationships with clients, journalists, editors, trendsetters, and key business leaders worldwide and has become a key resource for those writing about the manufacturing sector. Cutler founded the Manufacturing Media Consortium™ in the 1999. This extraordinary group of more than 3500 journalists worldwide is writing about trends, data, case studies, profiles, and features in the manufacturing and industrial sector. Cutler has worked with thousands of media outlets to expand manufacturing media coverage.   Cutler has authored more than 2,500 articles for a wide range of manufacturing periodicals, industrial publications, and business                                     journals including most of the leading monthly trade publications.  TR Cutler, Inc. recently launched a new professional coaching system for manufacturers worldwide named C.E.O.™ or Continuous Experiential Optimization.

TR Cutler, Inc.

www.trcutlerinc.com

Thomas Cutler

trcutler@trcutlerinc.com

888-902-0300