Manufacturing | Mechanical Condition Assessment on a Flour Mill

Client Background

A specialised flour milling operation realised the need for reliability improvement due to irregular maintenance expenditure and unplanned breakdowns. The plant produces high quality flour for the baking and commercial sectors, and with the growing demand for flour during Covid conditions, the plant could not produce sufficient product to meet demand due to plant unavailability.

Operations run 24/7, and production requires all lines and assets to be available to meet demand. The critical plant assets identified for condition monitoring include blowers, compressors, screens, screw conveyors and bucket elevators.

Plant Engineers identified the need for periodic condition monitoring services to detect potential defects before equipment failure.

Key Challenges

• A run-to-failure maintenance tactic is expensive with many asset replacements.
• No detailed criticality asset lists were available for prioritisation of monitoring points.
• No condition-based information was available to reliability and maintenance staff to assist with maintenance tactics
• Certain parts of the plant are classified as hazardous due to Hexane requiring EX rated test equipment to capture condition monitoring data.
• Maintenance budgets ball due to contractor fees and overtime costs.
• The health status and risk of plant assets were unknown.
• Hidden concealed defects existed, which posed a risk of asset failure.
• No quality control procedures were in place to assess maintenance workmanship.
• Tasks and activities were undocumented for corrective actions to take place.