In today’s industry, practices that were once acceptable are no longer even tolerated. Environmental concerns and EPA mandates are applying more and more pressure on businesses like the chemical industry to improve the manufacturing processes being used, to the point that not only is a slight drip from a pump seal not acceptable, but in 2004 the MACT will be enacted and only 500 – 1,000 parts per million vapor will be allowed and, eventually, no vapor at all.

Industrial Video Solutions (IVS) supplies high-speed digital video technologies to packaging, manufacturing and paper industries around the world. These systems combine the latest in GigE technology, digital video developments, efficient lighting and an intuitive, feature-rich user interface. The goal: keep that product moving!

The maritime industry is in many aspects using maintenance strategies from the past. Land based industry used to take influence from shipping to organise the maintenance in the 70:ties. Now industry is perusing new strategies that give better reliability and are more profitable. By focusing on reliability the indirect effects from doing the wrong maintenance can be reduced considerably. Shipping industry has from a maintenance aspect been doing the wrong things correct for many years. The opportunity is now to do the right thing correct instead.

The demand for this equipment will undoubtedly continue, but many users – particularly plant engineers and the increasing number of new energy surveyors – have been calling for affordable and user-friendly cameras which previously had only been available to specialist thermoraphers due to cost and complexity of use. This market-led demand has resulted in a new generation of cameras that combine thermal imagery with digital photography.

An important component of Borealis’ strategy is that rather than using separate condition monitoring software for their online systems, they transmit the condition data from these systems to their DCS, allowing operators to see both asset condition information and process information within a single HMI (Human Machine Interface) environment. This eliminates the need for operators to learn an entirely different system and ensures that condition data and process data are available simultaneously on the process control system. This, in turn, helps ensure that asset condition receives as much attention as process condition.

As part of a larger maintenance strategy, outsourcing the diagnostics and monitoring of critical machinery can be an effective tool in the battle to maximize asset availability and plant efficiency. In situations in which machine performance is critical but in-house analysis is not practical because of limited resources, outsourcing offers a cost-effective solution.

Condition monitoring (CM) is not a life-extending activity. Life-extending activities are things such as lubrication, alignment, balancing and operating procedures. It’s very important to keep this very basic fact clear in all communications within your plant; otherwise, too little importance may be placed on the planning and scheduling of corrective work orders originated in CM.

SPM Instrument AB, Sweden, launches a brand new diagnostic method in connection with Leonova™, a hand-held machine condition analyzer. Called the SPM Spectrum™, it is the result of an FFT on the time signal recorded with an SPM shock pulse transducer from a rolling element bearing. The individual bearing frequencies (BPI, BPO, 2*B2 and FT) and their harmonics are highlighted in the spectrum. This is displayed together with the measured shock value and a light signal, green, yellow or red that shows the result of bearing condition evaluation.