PAST PERFORMANCE
Challenges before Implementation
Thermal profiling of busbars in a cement plant is essential for the early detection of issues such as overheating and loose connections to prevent costly failures and ensure safety. Busbars are prone to corrosion and degradation in environments full of dust and moisture. Failures in bus bars can lead to fire, downtimes and expensive repairs. Manual thermography for inspecting busbars in cement plants presents a variety of challenges. Personnel conducting inspections may encounter safety risks due to hazards like electrical shock especially in high voltage areas. Covering extensive areas manually is time consuming and can lead to incomplete inspections and delays in identification of issues.
Continuous online monitoring of critical busbar location temperature gives a good indication of anomalies to help teams identify issues preemptively based on thermal trends.
This enables electrical teams to take timely action, which can help avert major losses, increase safety and improve the upkeep of electrical operations.
Selection of Busbars for implementation
In our implementation, We identified 47 critical RYB busbar joints across 2 plants for the following list of assets:
Recent Case
IOT solution recently detected high temperatures associated with the R phase incoming busbar of a distribution transformer. The trends highlight that the busbar temperatures increased steadily multiple times during the day. These peaks would’ve been otherwise missed during intermittent monitoring of busbar. This particular rise in temperature over consecutive days notified teams to inspect the faulty busbar. After repairs it can be observed the busbar temperatures have been stable since then.
Predictive Maintenance for Steel Manufacturing
Current Challenges
Manual vibration analysis of hundreds of rotating machines is a highly time-consuming task, that has various challenges as follows: Time consuming analysis: Manually capturing data using handheld instrumentation across hundreds of machines, followed by the assessment of readings, was time-consuming and delayed repairs.
Safety Hazard: Manual data collection across a steel manufacturing plant poses substantial safety risks and concerns for auditors, even
with all the protective equipment in place.
Productivity Losses: Due to delays in diagnosis, teams faced unplanned downtimes caused by the failure of critical rotating machinery,
resulting in significant productivity losses.
Need for real-time visibility: It was evident that there was a need for a real-time solution that could automatically collect daSoltau atnd i oonff er:
Solutions
Maintenance In response to these challenges, Faclon identified the following critical assets and implemented a highly strategic deployment on these assets
Conclusion
An industry 4.0 roadmap when implemented with well-thought outcomes in mind can yield transformational outcomes:
Shifting from manual to real-time asset health monitoring has notably reduced correction times, effectively mitigating million-dollar losses from unexpected downtime.
The feature-rich system enables comprehensive analysis, improving decision-making and predictions for asset maintenance and performance.
The system significantly reduces manpower needs and minimizes the risk for personnel collecting data in hazardous locations.
ROI is typically realized within 1 to 1.5 years, making the system a cost-effective investment with quick financial returns.