The effects of RCM on reliability and vibration monitoring teams
No one wants to get the call at 2 AM on a Saturday that a critical line at a processing plant is down, or that a vital pump station is not sending water into the community. Even when not after hours, unplanned downtime is why reliability teams exist.
According to a study by Siemens in 2022, the average manufacturing facility suffers 20 monthly downtime incidents, losing an average of 25 hours to unplanned downtime.
(The True Cost of Downtime 2022 – Siemens)
(The True Cost of Downtime 2022 – Siemens)
They also note that total downtime incidents have started to trend downward, but it’s outpaced by longer recovery times and higher cost of downtime. In fact, from their data, the average large factory loses $129 million in downtime per year.
Even in situations where downtime is less costly than these averages, it’s evident that avoiding unplanned stoppages leads to a rapid return on investment. Whether it’s avoiding lost production, overtime labor, expedited repairs and replacements, or other associated costs, a lack of production is a significant issue in all industries.
Companies seeking to avoid these issues increasingly look at options like remote condition monitoring (RCM) and Predictive Maintenance (PdM) solutions to help their facilities. One concern we hear in discussions around RCM and PdM products is that it will replace the jobs of reliability teams or certified vibration analysts, but does it?
The short answer is no, remote condition monitoring does not replace your team, but it will allow your team to do much more with the same number of existing resources. To dive into the long answer, we need to look back at what RCM is, where it should be implemented, and what it delivers.
What is Remote Condition Monitoring?
The terms RCM, PdM, and IoT have all become more popular with the rise of technology and AI. IoT, or the “internet of things,” is a term that refers to the connectivity of devices through the internet (or “cloud”). IIoT, or the industrial internet of things, is narrower in scope, referencing IoT in specifically industrial settings.
Remote condition monitoring (RCM) is a service under the IoT umbrella. It utilizes monitors to gather data, analyze it, and provide feedback without manual monitoring on-site. It can be focused on both electrical and mechanical equipment, with many connecting to SCADA or CMMS systems.
Comparing Reliability Approaches
Whether or not a facility uses an RCM solution, they typically employ other approaches to reliability and maintenance. Many facilities use a mix of different approaches based on the asset, location, or other factors.
Reactive Maintenance
When a facility waits for problems to occur before they are addressed, this is a reactive maintenance approach. One of the most common forms of this is a run-to-failure (RTF) approach, where a team performs no preventative maintenance. When a failure occurs, they decide to repair or replace the failed asset based on the failure. This approach may be paired with spares close at hand that reduce downtime while those decisions are made.
Reactive maintenance approaches have lower upfront maintenance costs. This type of maintenance means they can have a smaller maintenance team, and in some cases, they may be right because of the reduced workload compared to preventative maintenance. In most instances, customers who lean heavily into reactive maintenance tend to have higher maintenance costs because they end up “fighting fires” and reacting to emergencies, so there’s less ability to forecast and plan for more cost-effective downtime. Unplanned downtime is typically highest with this approach, with higher expedited and overtime costs than other methods.
If a reactive approach is often so expensive, why would anyone use it, and when does it make sense? Reactive approaches can make sense when the cost of downtime is low, and the effect of a failure is not noticeable. If there is significant redundancy or many in-stock spares for failed equipment, you can get up and running again with minimal interruption. The product may fail more completely than under other approaches, but many small motors and similar equipment are easiest to replace rather than repair, no matter how bad the failure.
Planned Maintenance
If a maintenance team wants to take a step toward preventing failures rather than just reacting, they’ll often move to a planned maintenance approach. One way to accomplish this is with a time-based approach, where maintenance is done monthly, quarterly, annually, or at some other interval. This makes it predictable and easy to plan the maintenance, but it may not fit precisely into what is required for the optimal equipment maintenance. You may be replacing parts too often or not seeing the equipment enough. There is a chance to catch or prevent failures if they align with the maintenance schedule, but it might be based on luck.
This approach is often used when downtime is costly, and systems are interconnected. For example, many mines will schedule an annual shutdown where all processes are taken down and maintained simultaneously. This is because taking just one section offline would still affect all other parts of the mine, so it’s easier to plan a massive interruption rather than let multiple minor interruptions happen as needed. This will often be coupled with critical spares so that failures on essential systems between shutdowns can be kept limping until the next shutdown.
Time-based maintenance may cause issues in some cases. There’s been a rise in motor bearing issues that have to do with overlubricating the bearings. In cases with manual scheduled greasing or motors on automatic lubricators, grease is added whether the motor is running. This can lead to skidding, overheating, and failures.
Another approach to planned maintenance is to conduct route-based monitoring. In these instances, preventative maintenance will happen if monitoring catches something wrong. This is an attempt to focus maintenance costs and efforts on areas that need attention.
There are two main issues with route-based monitoring. The first is that it can be more expensive, as the personnel who can conduct this monitoring must be trained and certified and devoted to this task. The other is that the monitoring interval may be too long to catch an issue before it becomes critical. Route-based monitoring balances committing enough resources to find problems and not too much to waste time and money looking where you don’t need to.
Predictive Maintenance
The most efficient approach is predictive maintenance. This involves collecting enough data on operating assets to predict a failure long before it happens. This means it can be fixed while the issue is at an early stage, and it is easier to correct before the equipment is left with permanent damage. It also allows time to plan the most convenient downtime, order spare parts, and plan the repair during off-production hours.
To implement predictive maintenance, a facility needs enough data to establish trends, detect changes, and predict future results. Gathering this information can be expensive and time-consuming for a reliability team. This is where remote condition monitoring comes into play.
When to Use Remote Condition Monitoring
If you want to get predictive, remote condition monitoring is an excellent option because it gathers data without committing your workforce to the task. With RCM, monitors and sensors are placed on critical equipment. The monitor can gather it more often to help establish trends and catch failures much earlier. RCM solutions will typically give you access to the data, have dashboards for review, and have ways to alert you of detected critical issues.
These sensors also make sense when it’s difficult for reliability teams to collect data on a route-based approach. This could include remote locations, dangerous environments, or even tough access.
Although companies like Skyler try to make the value much greater than the cost with easy implementation, there are some investments to start remote condition monitoring. RCM is an excellent solution for many products, but it’s not for every application. The graph below helps to illustrate when you should look at remote condition monitoring.
So, when does it make sense? Ultimately, it depends on your system. The more critical an asset is and the higher the cost of failure, whether through downtime, repair costs, workforce requirements, or inconvenience, the more it makes sense to mitigate that risk with a remote condition monitor. For a general rule of thumb on rotating assets, we’ve seen that the critical assets on which this makes sense range from 10-50% of your facility. This will change based on industry, redundancy, location, facility size, etc.
Does RCM Replace Reliability and Route-based Teams?
One of the main questions a facility has when looking at remote condition monitoring is how it will affect their existing maintenance and reliability teams. When you implement monitors, will you lose the need for the certified vibration analysts already on staff? From our experience, no, you still want your team.
Most reliability teams face a backlog of tasks, too many unmonitored assets, and many inefficiencies throughout their workday. Maintenance teams are busy fighting fires and trying to keep the facility running. RCM doesn’t replace these teams but helps them move from reactive to proactive.
Facilities that implement remote monitors still need to verify causation and make changes. One example is a monitor on a motor that Skyler identified as having an issue with. Skyler monitors detected that the problem wasn’t completely solved when replacing the motor. Although it could determine that the issue was with the foundation of the motor, it took an on-site team to go to the site and identify that the cement base had started to disintegrate, giving a shaky base for the motor.
We’ve seen a similar issue for many types of alerts. Skyler can detect an issue and give you a warning far ahead of time. Skyler even tells your team exactly what they should be checking, whether it’s a bearing issue, an alignment issue, or something else. Despite this knowledge, your team would still need to identify whether the root cause of the issue is a loose bolt, a broken foot, a cracked base, or some other issue. Skyler can cut down on the diagnosis time and quickly get attention in urgent matters, making existing teams more efficient.
Let Us Help!
The goal of remote condition monitoring is to take the shotgun approach that many facilities are forced to use and refine the scope of their work. We often hear that there’s too much time spent fighting fires and solving emergencies to get ahead, which RCM solves. When you know your most critical assets and processes, Skyler can help you get proactive and avoid the surprise of unplanned downtime.
Contact our team if you have questions about determining which assets make sense for an RCM solution or want help looking at pricing or processes. We’ll help make remote condition monitoring and predictive maintenance simple for you.