Uptime® Magazine
The mission of Uptime Magazine is to make maintenance reliability professionals and asset managers safer and more successful by providing case studies, tutorials, practical tips, news, book reviews, and interactive content.
Keep New York Moving.
That is the corporate mission and overall vision of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). So what does it take to keep the largest city in the United States up and running?
According to Mildred Chua, Vice President & Chief Financial Officer for MTA Bridges and Tunnels, “I believe that best practices in asset management will enable our organization to use our infrastructure to provide safe and reliable service to our customers. By managing our physical assets well, not only are we able to work toward ensuring high performance for our bridges and tunnels, but we are also able to realize the goals of maximizing our revenues while optimizing the cost of delivering our services.”
Are you a big believer in oil analysis, vibration analysis, infrared and the use of various kinds of ultrasound? Are you in favor of the tons of new technologies that let you look into aspects of a machine and see its condition in new ways?
If you search the Internet for information on asset management, the Internet and Industrial Internet of Things, digitalization, business trends and business reengineering, you’ll find a considerable increase in the number of articles with headlines heralding or promising significant and “disruption” or “disruptive” change.
In Part I (Oct/Nov 2017 Uptime), the focus was about the use of ultrasound and SAFETY. Hopefully, it spurred a discussion in your facility as to how this technology, no matter its age or origin, can be a lifesaver. This technology can truthfully claim that it has been around longer than any of you have been alive. Yet, it is still a most valuable technology in many, many ways.
Part II focuses on ultrasound for reliability maintenance and presents real-life situations as to why electrical workers and infrared thermographers should use ultrasound as a complementary technology.
Although the Internet of Things (IoT) has the ability to provide organizations with an astounding amount of data to help increase uptime, reduce total cost of ownership and improve operational efficiencies, companies are not using this data to its fullest potential. In fact, according to a report by McKinsey & Company, most IoT data remains unused. The small amount of data that is being used is generally applied only to anomaly detection, with little ongoing, sustainable value being achieved.
What’s worse, a disruption in a major city’s rail system or extended downtime in a cloud data center?
The answer, of course, depends on your perspective. If you’re one of thousands of people who use the rail system to get to work and you can’t afford to miss a day, that disruption is no small matter. But, if your business relies on the Cloud and you’re losing thousands of dollars for every minute of downtime, you might consider your situation more serious than that of the stranded commuters.
DC Water’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant is the largest advanced wastewater treatment plant in the world. It covers 153 acres and has a capacity of 384 million gallons per day (MGD) and a peak capacity of 1.076 billion gallons per day. This massive facility, commissioned in 1937, consists of hundreds of rotating assets that must operate efficiently to effectively support the needs of customers in a multi-jurisdictional area.
Mercedes-Benz U.S. International (MBUSI), an SUV and sedan plant in Vance, AL, was undergoing some organizational changes in August 2011. Ken Hayes had rotated through several senior management positions throughout Mercedes and was returning to maintenance and engineering after eight years managing body and assembly production operations. He was dissatisfied by a lack of growth in the maintenance systems and decided to benchmark other Daimler facilities to see if there were practices he could apply at MBUSI. Realizing maintenance challenges were very similar in the other plants, he searched for a different approach.
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