In an economy that must compete globally, South African producers have to remain competitive in the midst of weak commodity prices, high energy costs, and ageing equipment operated and maintained by a workforce clamouring for ever higher wages. This means that manufacturing assets must be made to sweat big-time, which implies maintenance strategies that are designed to maximise profitability through minimal occurrence of unplanned outages.
Enter the ideas of Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM), which focus on plant availability achieved by minimising the probability of equipment failure. RCM is a process that optimises asset reliability through the appropriate maintenance strategy, the primary objective being economic optimisation of machine reliability in line with organisational goals. RCM also aims to ensure that any investment on improving reliability is recovered in full, plus some acceptable return on the investment.
The strategy combines the power of pervasive sensing with the ideas of Big Data analytics and the Cloud. The result – in situ condition monitoring – transforms the old ideas of inspection by a plant engineer with clipboard, into a network of temperature and vibration sensors delivering data 24/7 to the online analytical tools that perform the predictive trending analysis.
It involves comparing key measurement indicators, such as vibration, temperature and power consumption, to baseline normal behaviour in order to determine if there is any degradation in equipment health. It relies on data collection, signal processing and trend analysis, to provide a complete picture of overall machinery health.
Since we strongly believe that the ideas of RCM could benefit the local manufacturing industry in a positive way, the SA Instrumentation and Control team is busy compiling the first locally available handbook on the subject. The Technews Industry Guide: Maintenance, Reliability & Asset Optimisation is designed to complement the annual Buyers’ Guide publication and introduce the benefits that this new technology can bring to our local manufacturing and utility companies.
Our aim is to provide the maintenance professional with a one-stop definitive resource that covers everything from in situ sensor-based solutions for condition monitoring, through handheld portable devices for periodic maintenance related checks, through software solutions for analysis and reporting, and on to customised services like hoist monitoring and reliability management consulting.
This new resource will provide editorial content covering thought leadership and trends in RCM, as well as application stories that illustrate innovative uses of the technology to overcome the inefficiencies of yesterday’s predictive and reactive approaches to plant maintenance. A selection of Buyers’ Guide dot-tables is provided to help end users identify the local technology, vendors and service providers who can assist with strategy development, as well as a featured product section to showcase the latest RCM-related product offerings.
The Technews Industry Guide: Maintenance, Reliability & Asset Optimisation will be posted free of charge this year to readers of both SA Instrumentation and Control and Motion Control magazines.
Welcome to a new contributing editor and kudos to an old one
It is a great pleasure to welcome Nick Denbow to the editorial team this month. Nick spent 30 years as a UK-based process instrumentation marketing manager, and then he changed sides to become a freelance editor and the founder of Processingtalk.com. He went on to publish the INSIDER automation newsletter for five years, www.iainsider.com, and now acts as its EMEA editorial correspondent. We are delighted that he has agreed to write a bi-monthly wrap of all the latest European-related automation and process news and gossip for this magazine as well. You can catch the first of 'Nick Denbow’s European Report…' in this issue.
Kudos to our resident control loop expert, Michael Brown. Mike’s interesting and highly informative Case History series has attracted the interest of C&I professionals from all over the world. The latest evidence of this came in the form of a letter to the editor from a senior Australian automation engineer, Philip Wilkie. It was interesting to read how the problems Mike encountered on a South African platinum concentrator resonated so strongly with the problems Philip faces in Australia. Readers can view the full letter as well as Michael’s reply @ http://www.instrumentation.co.za/51344n.
Don’t forget to diarise The Dome from 5-7 May – the inaugural Africa Automation Fair is shaping up as an event not to be missed.
Steven Meyer
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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