There are three facts about cement plants that are universally true:
- The average machine age in a cement plant is at least 30-40 years.
- Finding the right expertise to maintain them consistently is challenging.
- Every machine – big or small – has the power to bring the whole process to a complete standstill.
These three facts establish that proactive machine maintenance in cement plants is critical to remain profitable and scale efficiently. As demand for cement grows hand-in-hand with blooming infrastructure, GDP growth & exports, the pressure on cement plants to produce continuous, high-quality output also increases proportionately.
This article discusses Predictive Maintenance, a new age approach for plant maintenance, and why an IoT-led Predictive Maintenance approach can solve most of your maintenance worries for your cement plants.
Introduction to Predictive Maintenance
Predictive Maintenance in process manufacturing plants such as the cement industry can identify deviations in machine health at the nascent stage before they escalate into full-blown problems that may result in unplanned downtime.
But that is putting it very mildly. If you look at the daunting results of a neglected cement plant, violent accidents and sky-high repair and replacement costs, while the downtime continues indefinitely, are two of many consequences of a system that is not armed with the intel that Predictive Maintenance can provide.
Here’s a simple example that explains the difference between the health of a machine that uses Predictive Maintenance and one that doesn’t – exam preparation.
An intelligent student looks at exam preparation as a daily occurrence, checking in regularly to maintain good grades and maximize performance at the end of the year. A weaker one only thinks about the exam preparation as a reaction to the possibility of failing and only begins to take action when things have started to go south.
Condition Monitoring & Predictive Maintenance operate how a good student goes about exam prep. While Condition Monitoring checks in with the machine’s health periodically, Predictive Maintenance sees that the machine is continuously monitored and will keep functioning like it is supposed to for as long as possible.
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