Vibration analysis: Six benefits

Reduce equipment, labor costs and deliver more efficiency and safety.

By David Manney July 27, 2016

If your company deals with heavy and intricate machinery, consider creating a predictive maintenance service. Some mechanical problems start small, unnoticed, and end up causing a failure at the most inopportune time because no measures were in place to detect or prevent those problems. One important facet of predictive maintenance is vibration analysis.

Six cost benefits of vibration analysis:

1. Reduces equipment costs—Instead of replacement of the entire piece of equipment due to critical failure, a repair is made prior to failure, and cost is minimized to the price of the component and the labor needed for the repair.

2. Reduces labor costs—When repairs are scheduled, the amount of time needed for repair is reduced because of a smaller number of component replacements instead of entire equipment replacement. Also, the frequency of repair for critical failure of equipment will be reduced and the amount of "critical callouts" will be greatly reduced.

3. Reduces lost production time—Component-only replacement is scheduled with production to take place during scheduled downtime. Unscheduled downtime may cost thousands of dollars per hour. A proactive maintenance department can head off critical failure downtime by scheduling repair during nonproductive times.

4. Increases safety—Predictive maintenance would allow potential problems to be fixed before failure occurs, which would create safer driving conditions for employees and customers.

5. Increases revenue—With less maintenance on good components and quicker repair of faulty components, repairs can be more effectively handled, thereby reducing repair time.

6. Increases efficiency of employee time—Identifying the precise repair task needed to correct deficiencies, as well as the parts, tools, and support needed to correct the problem, can dramatically increase effective "wrench time."

Vibration analysis is useful for all types of rotating equipment, including the following:

  • Agitators
  • Mixers
  • Compressors
  • Paper machines
  • Extruders
  • Pumps
  • Fans
  • Refiners
  • Generator sets

– David Manney is a marketing administrator at L&S Electric. This article originally appeared on L&S Electric Watts New Blog. L&S Electric Inc. is a CFE Media content partner.

Original content can be found at www.lselectric.com.