Maintenance is perhaps the unglamorous end of engineering. While new product design and development is driven by the forces of creativity, maintenance is, by its very definition, more about keeping things ticking over. Yet that’s not to denigrate its importance: effective maintenance is crucial to the safety and performance of major equipment in just about every factory, offshore facility and power plant around the world.
Later this month, from 28 February to 1 March at the NEC in Birmingham, the maintenance industry will meet to assess the latest trends and technologies. The Maintec exhibition is a timely get-together – the economic environment means companies are looking at every possible means to improve plant productivity. Never has it been more important for maintenance managers to deliver improvements.
Perhaps that’s why, despite these times of austerity, nearly eight in 10 maintenance and engineering managers interviewed in advance of the show claim that they expect their budget to remain the same or increase over the coming year. Additionally, more than a third say that improving plant productivity is the main driver behind their maintenance spend.
This is welcome news given that 55% of respondents are planning to tackle the economic slump through added investment in predictive maintenance technologies that will extend plant longevity, improve efficiency and avoid catastrophic, costly plant failures.
The downside of the research, though, was that opinion was divided when it came to views on the board’s attitude to maintenance: 8% said they saw it as expensive, while only 8% believed their bosses considered it as good value for money. Nearly two fifths said their respective boards saw maintenance as an invaluable part of the business, but one fifth said directors saw it merely as a “necessary evil”.
Matt Benyon, part of the organising committee for Maintec, says such thinking is outdated: “Businesses are still finding it tough, but many realise that cutting back on maintenance budgets is false economy. There’s a wealth of advanced, affordable technology that can deliver significant efficiency savings and help protect machinery and equipment.”
In addition to using sophisticated predictive maintenance systems, the research showed that training (45%), energy management (42%), and inventory/spare parts management (39%) were other popular ways respondents planned to boost profits.
Additionally, more companies are responding to the recession by focusing on contracting and outsourcing: of those surveyed more than half (55%) do not outsource maintenance and asset management at the moment, but contracting and outsourcing was ranked top priority for them over the coming months.
Other key findings were that 70% said the board uses productivity to measure plant performance, followed by downtime (61%) and running costs (42%). And encouragingly, 41% said that the current climate had not forced them to postpone planned investment in major new equipment.
In addition to displays of new technologies, Maintec will give visitors the chance to listen to speakers on a range of relevant topics. There will be around 30 seminars running over the three days, with speakers from major firms such as Siemens, Schaeffler, and Britvic.
Ian Pledger, field service engineer for Schaeffler UK, will be using his time on the stage to inform engineers of how they can go about implementing condition monitoring more effectively.
“With the economic climate like it is, it is even more important to introduce an effective condition monitoring (CM) regime that enables engineers to keep machinery running efficiently,” he says.
“We talk to many industry professionals who are considering CM for their facility but who are not sure at first how best to go about it, or feel that CM may be too complicated or costly. With actual case studies, we can demonstrate that it is possible to start off slowly with a few techniques and then develop them over time to suit their plant equipment and their maintenance budgets.”
Dr Lee Renforth from High Voltage Partial Discharge, specialist within the field of online partial discharge testing and monitoring technology, will be discussing online partial discharge case studies for cables, switchgear, generators, motors and transformers.
“The presentation will discuss experiences from over 15 years of online partial discharge field testing and monitoring of medium-voltage and high-voltage cables, switchgear, transformers and rotating machines,” he says.
“It will include a summary of the different economic drivers which apply to both public utility and industrial networks.”
Health and safety, and wireless technology are further topics that will be in discussion over the three days. Ian Dormer, managing director at Rosh Engineering, says: “Ensuring your organisation has a positive health and safety culture is better than having rigorous rules and regulations. A positive culture not only improves staff loyalty but improves profitability.”
And talking all things wireless will be David Stefanowicz, technical manager at the Electrical Contractors’ Association. He says: “Wireless systems are fast becoming mainstream and are also a maintenance team’s dream window into the production process. I will reveal how they work and what pitfalls are to be avoided.”
Staying with the wireless systems theme, Crimson Industrial Vision will be discussing “remote visual inspection”. The latest advances in minimally invasive inspection use video endoscopes and inspection cameras. Users can reduce the need to strip down equipment for maintenance through remote visual inspection techniques. Significant benefits can be delivered in speed of turnaround and reduced maintenance-induced faults, says the company.
Other speakers include Brian Back, managing director at Radio Data. His paper will look at the major threat to business facilities from pollution and, in particular, firewater. He will also be introducing low-power radio – explaining the virtues of wireless technology as a safe tool for use in hazardous areas for data communications and monitoring.
One new aspect to the Maintec show will be a hazardous area event called Hazex. This will give engineers the chance to discover products, legislation, case studies and techniques applicable to working within hazardous areas and handling hazardous materials.
One of the new minefields for engineers is the mandatory European Commission directive Atex 94/9/EC, covering explosive atmospheres and the relevant laws in the EU. Hazex will provide a forum for companies supplying products to those working in such hazardous environments.
- Exhibition name: Maintec 2012
- When: Tuesday 28 February to Thursday 1 March
- Where: NEC, Birmingham
- Organiser: easyFairs
- Website: www.easyfairs.com
- Entry: Free of charge through online registration