At times, this debate has been contentious, pitting one department or function against another, with the winner being, in many cases, who can yell the loudest or who has the most sway with top executives. The key participants in the ERP vs. EAM debate are most often finance, IT and operations.

When exploring CMMS automation opportunities in your facility, there are many factors to consider. These include cost versus benefit by automating, cash-flow impact, organizational readiness, ease of implementation, availability of resources, technological maturity and availability, as well as probability of success.

Why automate, why improve? They’re all about the same question, so after covering the more general area, we’ll zoom in on the specifics of PLCs. “Why improve?” Because your competitors are, and you will not be in competition with them very long, if you don’t. “More and better” are today’s bottom line. With the customers being better educated, and having better availability of the product they seek, you have no choice.

One of the most pervasive trends in fluid handling today is that of miniaturization. The call for smaller and smaller flow control devices is evident across the industry. Regarding hydraulic and pneumatic components specifically, the extraordinary mass-to-power and mass-to-response features of such technologies are enabling miniaturization.1 But as hydraulic and pneumatic devices continue to go mini, the manufacturing process has become more finite and certain design vulnerabilities have become more pronounced.

It is not necessary to totally restructure maintenance practices. A plant can start small and expand the use of process floor information as needs dictate and budgets allow. The key is to begin building a database from the smart devices now in operation and expand the use of the available information as the number of such devices grows. A scalable and expandable platform can grow into a plantwide system that supports the reliability and maintainability of all field instrumentation.

Today’s new control systems are delivering higher productivity to meet ever-increasing expectations of equipment performance. These systems typically contain more electronics, much of it adopted from non-industrial applications, and almost all of it more sensitive to electrical disturbances than the equipment being replaced. The following discussion provides information needed to develop a strategy for protecting sensitive mission critical equipment from the effects of a poor industrial power environment.