25 Jan,2016 UTC+8 Views:
Gaining maximum return from your cement manufacturing operations can’t be achieved without a high performance maintenance system this works hand-and-glove with production and quality efforts. This level of coordination and performance doesn’t happen without a concerted effort, but the returns can be pretty stunning for successful programs.
The rapid pace of management changes that exists in the cement plant these days makes it nearly impossible to implement and sustain a program to achieve world-class results using only internal personnel. In every case, the people there are already so busy to expect them to take on a performance improvement project in unrealistic. In addition they are often not there long enough to see the project to fruition, which makes it less likely to be a success.
That is where we come in. We have worked in more than 60 cement plants around the world. As a result of our extensive experience, we have a good perspective as to what works, what doesn’t and why.
1. Preventive and Predictive Plant Maintenance
Most cement plants have preventive maintenance programs of some type but very few of those plants actually use their PM programs effectively
2. Preventable Maintenance
A careful look into daily maintenance activities often reveals a surprising number of jobs that are performed over and over that could be almost totally eliminated by small changes in equipment or procedures.
3. Planning and Scheduling
Planning done right is truly a thing of beauty. When a repairman arrives on a job with all the tools and documentation he needs to find that the equipment is shutdown, the job site is clean and ready for him to go to work, and the parts he will require are bagged and tagged and delivered, and the production people are there to support him…the job is done better and faster...and everyone is much happier.
4. Reliability and Productivity Reporting
You have to know when your equipment breaks down or plugs up, why, and how long it takes to get it back running in order to make good decisions on how to allocate resources.
5. Cement Plant Shutdown Management
Cement plant often spend 40% to 50% of their entire maintenance budget during the annual plant shutdown. The best run cement plant often bring in outside resources to help plan and manage their shutdown work. At a certain point a cement plant shutdown can get so big it is unmanageable. We can help you find ways to get some of the work done during the year, reducing the size of the plant shutdown.
6. “Fill it up” Program
It is an undisputable fact that if internal inventories of cement, clinker, kiln feed, coal, etc. are kept high, small production interruptions can often be handled without expensive emergency action. Unfortunately many plants don’t have any active procedures that keep tanks and silos filled.
7. Effective Outsourcing and Contract Maintenance
According to a national study, the fact that someone has done a certain job in a certain location before, allows 100% improvement in both efficiency and quality of work. This means that having a strategic relationship with a trustworthy cement plant contractor is by far the most cost effective way to handle shutdowns. Yet many plants continue to give shutdown jobs to the lowest bidder every year, and every year wonder why they suffer the consequences.
8. Production and Maintenance Common Goals Program
In the truly world-class plants, the production people are always present for the maintenance jobs to make sure that the equipment is shut down, locked out and ready for maintenance, that the maintenance people really understand what needs to be done and they remove their locks and leave the equipment set to run. In the not so world-class plants, the production types never even visit job sites until the equipment is ready to go.
9. Failure Analysis
Anyone can change parts, but it takes training and expertise to be able to recognize the root cause of the failure and make appropriate changes. We can even do solid modeling and finite element analysis if necessary to find and fix complicated cracking issues, etc.
