Case Study- Saving Millions of Dollars with Optimized Preventative Maintenance Program

Manufacturing and production facilities in existence today have various ages. Some plants operate on philosophies and programs that are decades old and have not kept up with the latest technologies. Many older plants have Preventative Maintenance (PM) Programs that are based on time in service. One example would be the time-based tradition of tearing down a pump motor shaft coupling and completing a laser realignment annually.

More modern plants implement the use of vibration monitoring. Bearings and shafts hubs can be left alone until the vibration monitoring detects that an issue is beginning to develop. Modern plants are also structured with trained operations personnel that are capable to observe the condition of equipment, report suspect conditions, and top off lubricants and coolant levels as needed.

The graph (right) represents average data from a typical plant facility. Annual equipment cost data for 11 years is presented on the orange curve. Years 1-4 indicate an increase in equipment costs from $200k to over $800k. Years 5-9 had drastic swings in annual expenses and a spike up to almost $1.2 Million.

Kaltech was invited to review the PM data and we found some places to optimize the program. The recommended improvements resulted in reducing annual cost expenditures to a level similar to a decade ago.