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Adding predictive maintenance to your plan

Published by , Digital Editorial Assistant
World Cement,


Franklin Moore, Flexco, USA, discusses the importance of annual belt conveyor assessment and Flexco’s ‘Give Us Your Worst, We’ll Give You Our Best’ contest.

When you’re dealing with the day-to-day business of moving materials from Point A to Point B, you don’t have time to worry about your conveyor line going down. A little carryback on that conveyor, some spillage in the load zone, a worn belt splice – they can make it one more shift, right? You can take that gamble or you can call in the professionals to assess your belt conveyors and give you a plan to correct seemingly small issues that can have a big impact on your system.

Since you really don’t have time for unexpected periods of downtime, you should add an annual belt conveyor assessment to your preventative maintenance plan. After all, those unexpected periods of downtime can lead to some major problems, including the inability to fulfill customer demands, worker downtime, overtime pay, expensive repairs, and even safety issues as a plant struggles to get back up to speed.

Worst of all, it affects the plant’s bottom line.

 

Conducting a proper assessment

 

First and foremost, Flexco would suggest bringing in a third party to assess your system. After all, if you’re looking at the same thing every day, you may overlook a serious problem or even an opportunity to enhance the efficiency of your system.

A new set of eyes will also look at your belt conveyor system in a holistic manner. While each product in a conveyor system is a separate component, it is important to evaluate the entire system as a whole to ensure that everything is compatible and working in harmony. If your fasteners and belt cleaners aren’t compatible with each other, you could have major belt wear or your cleaner could be ineffective because of damage from the fasteners. Spotting that and addressing it could save you from mounds of carryback or catastrophic belt failure.

Focusing on system solutions, as opposed to simply focusing on replacing specific products, is also key to a good conveyor assessment. Whoever walks the belt conveyor line needs to identify all of the issues they find, not simply the issues that they can fix with their product or service. Finding the source of the problem and addressing it is way more efficient than simply treating the symptoms. Your assessor should tell you why the problem is happening and why the solution he/she is suggesting will work for you.

Finally, whoever conducts your assessment should give you some kind of plan of action so you know what issues to tackle first. After all, no one wants a list of problems without an idea of what is most important. From there, you can schedule maintenance to optimise your conveyor performance at a time that works for you.

 

Give Flexco your worst, and get an assessment

 

Need a reason to get an assessment this month? How about the chance to win free product, free training, and peace of mind that your conveyor is ready for the long haul.

Flexco is giving you that opportunity with their recently-announced ‘Give Us Your Worst, We’ll Give You Our Best’ contest, inviting cement plants to send photos and videos of their biggest belt conveyor challenges for a chance to win free Flexco products and prizes.During the contest, which runs from 1 August to 31 August 2019, Flexco invites cement plant employees to record a video or snap a photo of problems along their beltline – mistracking, carryback, dust, spillage, slippage, etc. – and submit it to www.giveusyourworst.com to enter the contest.

All contest participants will be contacted by a Flexco Territory Manager, who will conduct a free assessment on the entire belt conveyor system, focusing on the ‘worst’ challenges and identifying any additional challenges they discover. The Flexco expert will offer solutions to these conveyor issues, and one cement plant will be the ‘Grand Prize Winner’ of free product and delivery, free training, and a US$250 product voucher towards future purchases.

Log on to www.giveusyourworst.com for complete contest details and rules and to submit the biggest challenges on your belt conveyor line. For more information on Flexco products, programs, and services, log on to www.flexco.com.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/the-americas/01082019/adding-predictive-maintenance-to-your-plan/

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