MANAGING AN INFLECTION POINT

EMBRACE MAINTENANCE
Moving to lean and automating in the midst of a skills shortage will expose maintenance as the proverbial elephant in the room: a traditional operating barrier to competition that many struggling small shops either miss or ignore. To prepare for the coming transition, the elephant must be converted into a strategic competitive asset. How?

Jon Stevens, a vice president for SKF USA (Kulpsville, PA), answered this at the seventh annual SKF Technical Press Day I recently attended in Philadelphia: “By upgrading equipment and applications, improving skills and maintenance practices, optimizing strategies, using sustainability to gain a competitive advantage through proper stewardship of resources, and doing the things that make sense.” In other words, this conversion plugs all of the operating philosophies of getting lean and automating into every function of maintenance.

When upgrading equipment, plug an evaluation of remanufactured options into the traditional justification for new equipment. For example, Wayne Greer of SKF presented various repair and reconditioning remedies for ball screw assemblies. He examined the symptoms that may suggest trouble and recalled how, once upon a time in a thriving global economy, failed machinery would simply be replaced outright, usually at considerable expense and certain downtime.

But in today’s economic climate, you must plug in how performance is equal, how a remanufactured ball screw costs only two-thirds the amount of a new one, and how poor lubrication can reduce ball screw life up to 70 percent. He walked through remanufactured ball screw solutions for a heavy-duty stamping press, a machine tool grinding system, and oxyfuel, laser, plasma, and waterjet cutting systems. The bottom line is that every day and dollar counts.

To improve skills and maintenance practices, Ed Zitney of SKF used an example of maintaining machine tool spindle assemblies. He plugged in the “Keys to Extending Spindle Life,” which include grouping failure modes into (1) contamination, (2) crashes and abuse, and (3) lubrication failure and overloads. He explained how a spindle running 70,000 rpm on a 24/7/365 schedule will last only a year at best before failure and plugged in how, with performance being equal, a remanufactured spindle costs only 40 percent of a new one, with a three-week turnaround on delivery as opposed to months for a new one.

Dave Staples of SKF discussed ways to optimize maintenance strategies by exploring how condition monitoring tools advance machine reliability goals. He plugged in how proactive maintenance programs can significantly benefit from machine condition monitoring that aims to detect problems before they can escalate and help keep equipment up and running. He also plugged in newly-introduced portable data collectors and inspection systems that can make the difference between uptime and downtime. “Going green” through sustainability is an enormous component of the coming transition, so Bill McGlocklin of SKF plugged in how green facility design and green operations can increase energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint of a manufacturing plant.

Regardless of what happens in the near future, winners will embrace maintenance as a competitive weapon to reduce operating costs and combat energy-related burdens.

Manufacturing is on the brink of a profound change in the way business is conducted. Are you prepared?