Archives for December 2018

HOW A MOTOR MODIFICATION INCREASED WORKPLACE SAFETY

No Higher Priority than Safety

This Decatur Industrial customer had several 800HP motors that required air filter changes at least once a month and sometimes once a week. Changing that filter required a ladder or rollaround staircase, which added time and safety concerns

With increased focus on safety in the workplace, the customer wanted to be able to change the filter from the ground. D.I.E. was engaged to engineer a solution so the motor performance would not be affected.

Our team modified the hood ductwork utilizing engineering data to maintain the same airflow while lowering the filters to allow safer and faster changes.

Contact Decatur Industrial today to see what modifications we can make to improve safety in your facility.

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Mission Critical

On any given day there are hundreds, or maybe thousands, of assets driving a plant environment. Each application within the plant has various tasks hence establishing the need for assets of different sizes, cost, and criticality. All assets need to be cared for cost effectively; however, there are usually several assets per plant that are labeled critical assets which receive a little extra care. Review your plant’s assets, identify and verify the condition of the critical assets regularly, and use the PM tools and methods that are available to optimize the integrity of those assets before other less critical assets. Based on the risk to business, on average less than 20% of assets within the plant should be labeled critical.

Source: Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices by Ramesh Gulati

Teamwork Leads to Home Run

Having teamwork or a team mentality is highly beneficial in creating a successful reliability program. “What do I need to provide to others, and from others, to ensure meeting my responsibility?” (Moore, p379) Working with other departments and communicating clear goals and objectives as you all strive to maximize equipment and process reliability for the good of the company should be a minimum standard. Having quality leadership to set the process expectations and support the team through execution is valuable to a team mentality. When this occurs, you’ve hit a home run, costs are minimized and production uptime is maximized.

Source: Making Common Sense Common Practice, Ron Moore.