MRO Virtual Event

MRO Magazine recently held its first-ever Maintenance and Reliability in a Changed World Virtual Summit, which allowed maintenance, reliability, and operations professionals to learn techniques to optimize their day-to-day maintenance activities. The summit brought together professionals from across the MRO world, and a endees were very engaged throughout. Industry experts and sponsor representatives gave a series of presentations and discussions that le¨ a endees with a plethora of information to digest.

Suzane Greeman from Greeman Asset Management Solutions Inc., led a session on Executive Leadership in Asset Management: What The C-Suite Needs to Know. She summarized her presentations as follows.

“Many asset-dependent firms have assets that are important to national life, such as powerplants, water treatment plants,

airports, railways, sea ports and manufacturers. Many of these are at significant risks. They have been weakened internally by aging assets, inappropriate business systems, and human factors. They have also been threatened externally by global socio-economic and geo-political factors.

“Top management is ultimately responsible to the stakeholders for value creation, and therefore need to protect the organization from value erosion. This level of management is also the only level vested with the authority to build the culture, sustain it, enact policy, and make structural changes. This means that senior leadership have a special responsibility to build internal resilience to protect the organization from external threats.

“Senior management also has specific responsibilities as it relates to the asset management system. They need to: provide clarity around the strategic direction of the organization; es-

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tablish the asset management office, the related governance and provide specific approvals; champion asset management philosophies; create cohesion, disruption and collaboration at the middle management level; align financial and non-financial Information; create financial literacy; manage competences; continually evaluate roles and responsibilities; promote the integration of asset management processes into the organization’s other business processes; educate themselves in asset management; and don’t circumvent the organization’s asset management processes. Asset management requires top management oversight, participation and active support. Asset management is a top management job.”

James Reyes-Picknell from Conscious Asset led a session on The New Normal for Continual Improvement, which proved very engaging, and included a lively Q&A session. He summarized his presentation as follows.

“The "new normal" remains largely ill-defined, although we continue to learn what is working and what is not working when it comes to handling COVID-19, and its impacts in our daily lives at home and at work. What we do know is that the "old normal" is gone, and that one thing remains constant, change. In the world of MRO, many companies were already struggling with high maintenance costs, and low availability of productive assets leading to less than the best business performance. Few had improvement initiatives underway and even they put those on hold when COVID-19 measures hit.

“With fewer numbers at work, many working in new ways, and li le change to old business processes, we can expect less efficiency from those processes. There was simply no time to consider re-engineering before sending people home. We are coping, some be er than others, and we know that what we are doing now is not going to be sustainable. Where MRO performance was low, it is still low and likely even suffering more. Funding for maintenance and parts has been cut by some 28 per cent of companies and another 41 per cent have suspended capital work and new acquisitions.

“We know that reduced maintenance now will come back to haunt us. Reduced parts spending is hurting now and will only get worse. The need to improve efficiency and effectiveness of our maintenance and reliability programs has not changed, and may be even more critical now. Leadership is not even looking at it, 42 per cent of those a ending the summit responded that lack of leadership foresight is a barrier to improvements as their companies emerge from COVID-19. Another 38 per cent are somewhat distracted by current measures. That's a whopping 80 per cent who have taken their eyes of the ball. That is a leading indicator that our industrial recovery from COVID-19 is likely to be marked with setbacks in performance and competitiveness, unless we make some course corrections, and make them soon.”

Finally, an open discussion featuring speakers and sponsor representatives; took place. The session saw all participants partake in a lively debate on a variety of MRO related topics, aided by a variety of questions from a endees.

Those who missed the live presentation, can now view the sessions on-demand. The session are available here: www.

mromagazine.com/virtual-events/maintenance-and-reliability-in-a-changed-world-virtual-summit/ MRO

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WHAT’S NEW IN PRODUCTS

For more product news, visit www.mromagazine.com/products

WAGO I/O System Field WAGO I/O System Field is IP67 rated and offers two types of housings: cast zinc with encapsulated electronics, and non-encapsulated plastic with low mass.

Cast zinc housing devices have input and output power ports for use with daisy chained modules, and are Profinet based. Future releases will be able to support EtherNet/ IP and EtherCat protocols. They are designed for the timesensitive networking standard, support OPC UA and MQTT communications, and can be configured via smart device app using Bluetooth technology.

Non-encapsulated lightweight modules are IO-Link hubs for connection to an IO-Link Master. They are available in eight or 16 configurable DIO ports and each channel is configurable for a 24 VDC digital input or output rated at two amps per channel. Both are equipped with load management. Current and voltage levels can be recorded and evaluated, and overload limits and alarms can be set for each channel.

www.wago.com/us/discover-io-systems/field

VALUE ADDED PARTNER FOR AUTOMATIC LUBE SOLUTIONS

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For Total Lube Solutions, GO WITH THE FLO! AC Inverter Welding Power Supplies AMADA WELD TECH Inc., MIB300A and MIB-600A AC inverter welding power supplies, offer exact heat input and quality welds. It uses inverter technology with pulse width modulation to produce and simulate an AC waveform. AC inverter can produce an AC frequency from 50 to 500 Hz, is not affected by line voltage fluctuation, and provides a balanced three phase load.

MIB-300A and MIB-600A feature secondary constant current control, up to 20 pulses per weld and ability to set upslope, downslope and weld interrupt. MIB-300A and MIB-600A may be used with the same transformers and weld heads as standard AC welders. With max output currents of 20,000 and 40,000 A respectively, the units may be used for a variety of welding applications.

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Low Profile Stoppers Pipestoppers, low profile inflatable stoppers are available in sizes 150 to 2,235 millimetres in diameter and provide grip inside the pipe, with an airtight seal. Each stopper is fi›ed with a standard schrader valve connected to a 1.2 metre hose, is inflatable using a foot pump or compressor, and is heat resistant up to 80ºC.

Cylindrical and spherical stoppers: stop the flow of gas or liquid inside pipes and ducts. Available up to ø 2,440 mm. For higher temperatures, these inflatable stoppers can also be manufactured with a heat resistant cover for temperatures up to 300ºC.

PetroChem stoppers: manufactured from latex, are used for stopping off pipes with hydrocarbon gases and liquids inside. Inflatable rubber plugs: a wide diameter range, can withstand chemicals and hydrocarbons, for higher-pressure applications, with a long life.

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TE Connectivity Hydraulic LVDT Sensors Optimized for hydraulic valves and actuators, TE Connectivity LVDT position sensors are accurate, reliable, compact and adaptable. LVDT position sensor can measure spool position within onethousandth of an inch and infinite resolution.

Friction-free operation enables reliable sensor life and repeatability, allowing hydraulic LVDTs to be used in demanding, high-cycle applications. They are hermetically sealed and can be mounted inside valves, capable of withstanding high pressure (up to 10,000 psi) and harsh exposure such as hydraulic fluid. Stroke lengths as low as +0.005 inches.

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Spring Loaded LVIT Linear Position Sensor Harold G. Schaevitz Industries LLC ILPS-18S Series spring loaded inductive linear position sensors use LVIT Technology. It has a compact design, long service life, and ideal for test stands, test laboratories, automated assembly machines, processing and packaging equipment, robotics, and automotive test applications.

It offers: measuring ranges from 13 to 100 millimetres; excellent stroke-to-length ratio; service life rated to over 100 million cycles; 19 mm diameter threaded aluminum housing sealed to IP-67; and,axial termination with M12 connector or integral cable.

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CMP New Cord Grip CMP Products, cable glands in the CG range are designed and engineered to suit unarmored flexible cables and cords. The glands are manufactured from 6000 series aluminum, provide corrosion and ingress protection in wet, dry, or hazardous environments; and have undergone testing to the latest edition of UL50E.

The cord grip is available in sizes ranging from 3/8” to 2”; with each including an entry thread seal and locknut as standard. Other materials available on request include zinc plated steel, stainless steel, and nickel plated.

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Focus on Scheduling and Planning of Maintenance with Guest Doc Palmer

Doc Palmer has over 30 years of industrial experience, primarily as a practitioner within the maintenance department of the Jacksonville Electric Authority. He was responsible for overhauling the existing maintenance planning organization, of which, the results played a role in expanding planning to all cra¨s and stations at the utility.

Doc authored the Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook in 1999, which is now in its fourth edition. He has also delivered numerous maintenance articles (including many scheduling and planning articles for MRO magazine), as well as doing presentations for the industry. MRO

Mr. 0, The Practical Problem Solver

Don't Lose Productivity during COVID-19, Gain It While in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, in May (in spite of new work hindrances) a western wastewater utility completed more work orders in a single month than ever in its history. How was that possible? Maintenance planning and scheduling played a big role.

In February, before the virus had gained notoriety, the utility had started rethinking its approach to planning and scheduling. With planning, the utility oriented its planners more toward improving plans over time especially with craft feedback. The utility wanted plans to be helpful, but the crafts had always resented planning as people trying to tell them how to do things. The utility became better at telling crafts that the purpose of the plans was to supplement craft skill and knowledge.

Plans should give a head start that planners can improve over the years, especially with tricks of the trade that crafts want the planners to remember for them. Since this strategy did not mandate plans should be perfect, it allowed planners to plan more work to help more jobs and better support scheduling. With scheduling, the utility began giving crews fully-loaded schedules each week, instead of letting supervisors select all the work. Since supervisors had always done a great job responding to urgent work and otherwise keeping everyone busy, this change in scheduling strategy was the hardest | to implement.

With everyone busy and doing a good job, how could putting a specic batch of work in front of a supervisor each week help? To a large degree, the notion of the full schedule that can easily be broken doesn’t make much sense. As hard as it was to believe, the new sense of “mission of a fully-loaded, weekly schedule” gave the utility a lot more productivity than the old sense of “taking care of operations and keeping everyone busy.”

The trick was to realize that just as plans can’t be perfect, we The trick was to realize that just as plans can’t be perfect, we should not expect schedules to be perfect. In May, the utility management convinced itself to fully load the schedules and great things happened, a record month for productivity.

And just in time. MRO

-Doc Palmer