Monitoring on one condition, zero cost
15 Jan 2000
Fibrogen's innovative poultry-litter-fired Glanford power station at Flixborough, Lincolnshire, has another claim to fame apart from its source of fuel. It was used as the beta test site for an equally innovative approach to condition monitoring by Bruel & Kjaer.
Basically, Bruel & Kjaer's Condition Monitoring Guarantee (CMG) offers a long-term partnership with its customers. According to Jeremy Kingston, manager of B&K's UK condition monitoring division, `we needed to find a solution to all the customer's problems - how to justify condition monitoring, how to finance a purchase, technical suitability of the wide range of products available, ever-reducing manpower availability, and of course long-term support and maintenance. The "black box shifter" reputation that has become synonymous with many condition monitoring suppliers is not doing anybody any favours. The B&K CMG solves all these problems and more.'
As at Glanford, the implementation of the CMG is a four-stage process: a site survey to decide which machines are to be monitored: system installation based on this survey; the collection of monitoring data at monthly intervals; followed, after approximately four months of operation, by an analysis of the results to calculate the overall cost saving of the monitoring for each machine part.
Only when the savings outweigh the cost of the monitoring itself is the partnership endorsed. From that point on the cost of the scheme is financed as a function of the continued savings made. And the innovation? If these savings do not outweigh the cost then the system is removed and the whole exercise will have cost the operator absolutely nothing.
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