At the LyondellBasell Industries oil refinery in Houston, a condition-monitoring program has changed the way the company manages maintenance. Now, instead of gathering readings on paper reports that never get reviewed, plant operators collect data on handheld electronic devices, aggregate the data and track trends that can indicate a problem.

A faulty seal or broken pump can lead to a costly production interruption. “Now, operators have an actual reading from devices,” says Mark Fisher, operations reliability supervisor at LyondellBasell. “If the reading is above a certain limit, they’re prompted to tell their maintenance folks so they can prevent a catastrophic shutdown. The readings allow us to fix things before they break.”

Before implementing a Wonderware IntelaTrac system, the plant took temperature and vibration readings on paper. “You can’t trend on a piece of paper,” says Fisher. “The supervisor would set up a big pile of run sheets in a three-ring binder. By the time anyone got around to looking at them, it was too late to take any action in a timely manner.”

He notes that the paper reporting didn’t include specific data ranges to indicate problems. “With the paper system, one operator would look at the reading and see something wrong, while another operator would see it as OK.” With the handheld data readings, a note will pop up on the screen when the range is exceeded, prompting a call for maintenance. “We lose the inconsistency,” says Fisher.

Big brother?

Fisher notes that there was resistance to the new system initially. “At first, operators were skeptical. They thought it was Big Brother.” That changed when operators started to detect fans that weren’t working and seals that were plugged—problems that had gone undetected with the paper system.

Plants are turning to condition monitoring to reduce costs and replace the knowledge of baby-boomer engineers who are about to retire. Some are implementing predictive tools in-house, while others outsource it to software companies or original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) . Many plant operators are just now getting around to implementing condition-monitoring technology that’s existed in their control systems for years. Ease-of-use portals and dashboards are helping resistant workers switch to monitoring technology. Condition monitoring includes a number of analytical tools, including vibration monitoring, oil analysis, temperature monitoring and infrared imaging. They share one thing in common—collecting data on plant equipment and analyzing the data to see when things are out of whack. Sophisticated condition monitoring can also catch subtle aspects of equipment performance. “It may not be the temperature that’s the issue, but that it’s rising quickly,” says Colin Shearer, senior vice president of strategic analytics at SPSS Inc., an analytic software company in Chicago.

For some companies, predictive maintenance has become a boardroom issue. “There are companies that consider condition monitoring a strategic advantage,” says Tom Alford, product manager, integrated condition monitoring at vendor Rockwell Automation Inc, in Milwaukee. “One power-generation company called out condition monitoring in its annual report as part of the company’s strategic vision.”

The recession has encouraged the use of predictive maintenance tools. The tools are becoming more popular as plants struggle to extend the life of their equipment and optimize equipment operation in the midst of a severe downturn. Plants can no longer afford scheduled maintenance—which often means replacing something that’s not broken—or the costly fix-it-when-it-breaks maintenance strategies.

With the pressure to drive down costs, many manufacturers turn to technology they already have on hand but haven’t implemented. “Since we’re having a slowdown in capital projects, they’re starting to use the products that they bought in the past,” says Rich Chmielewski, manager for PCS7 at Siemens Industry Inc., in Alpharetta, Ga. “We’re getting questions about reporting and diagnostics. Our customers are starting to use technology they’ve had but haven’t been using.”

Making connections

Much of the infrastructure of predictive maintenance systems has been in play for years. Plants already use smart devices that can sense temperature and vibration. They’re also using a fieldbus network that transmits the device data. “You take the data from smart devices and smart control valves, and you send it along the Hart and fieldbus communication and networking systems,” says Stuart Harris, general manager of the Plant Asset Management business at Emerson Process Management, an Austin, Texas, automation supplier. “You take all that data and apply reliability analytics to see the efficiency of the equipment. Then you combine predictive diagnostics with decision support to make the connection with performance.”

One of the biggest hurdles to adopting condition monitoring is getting people to change ...