Service Advisor - January 2010

In this Issue

Happy New Year!

Regardless if you are a year round or a seasonal processor, chances are you are busy with maintenance activities. We are here to help you with all your Service, Parts and Training needs, call us +1.877.UPTIME1 (+1.877.878.4631).

Wouldn't it be great to not only identify what needs maintenance, but when the optimal time to perform it is? Condition Based Maintenance does just that and in this issue, we provide an overview of CBM.

We would like to know what services you need to make your job easier. If you have a few minutes please take a short survey to give us your thoughts.

Condition-Based Maintenance

Equipment failure should never happen!

For those of you working in the real world, this statement might seem impossible. No matter how diligently you execute to your preventive maintenance program, the harsh rules of the processing environment cause seemingly inevitable equipment failure and down time. Take heart, because a new maintenance model called Condition Based Maintenance is changing that rule set. With Condition Based Maintenance, the impossible statement above can be realized.

Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) uses real-time operating data to determine when maintenance should be performed. Using various tools and technologies to monitor equipment conditions, a CBM system will analyze equipment health, recommend timing for specific maintenance activities, and provide alerts when unexpected conditions occur. This diagram shows the optimal maintenance window based on monitoring the condition, and predicting a fail condition. CBM recommends maintenance just prior to fail condition, in order to prevent down time or less than efficient operation.

In a time-based or preventive maintenance environment, equipment failures are not predicted. Equipment failures between PM cycles result in down time or operating the equipment sub-optimally (if safety is not affected by doing so). What impact does that have on your operation?

Let’s look at the impact of 1 hour of down time:

300 days of operations * 16 hours per day * 25,000lbs/hr * $0.35/lb for finished product = $42,000,000 revenue per year. That equates to $8,750 per hour in opportunity costs for unexpected down time. That is just the cost of lost revenue. You should also factor in labor, unexpected costs of parts, product that had to be disposed of, etc… An accepted industry standard is 95% uptime. So a 5% downtime in this example costs $2.1 million in opportunity cost of lost revenue. A 1% improvement is worth $420,000 in revenue!

Other costs:

Failure response and traditional PM methods are wasteful. You have to stock parts you “think” might fail, not necessarily the ones that actually do! Not having the right part only adds to the downtime and extra costs to get them right away. Traditional PM replaces parts that may not require it only because they are old. That is not to say all PM is wasteful, changing oil as recommended for example helps prolong the life of a drive. But wouldn’t it be great to know when to replace a drive because the bearings are starting to fail?

CBM is not without its drawbacks. The initial cost of the technology is usually an upfront cost and not cheap. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) will require integration work to take full advantage of a CBM program.

A CBM program can help you prioritize and optimize your maintenance processes. Your maintenance personnel will have solid data driving their decisions on what to do and when to do it. The result is lower production cost, maximum asset performance, reduced maintenance cost, increased performance and increased uptime!

Key’s SmartArm™ for Iso-Flo® shakers is an example of a Condition Based Monitoring tool. We are also exploring CBM tools and technologies we can implement on our sorters. We are interested in your feedback and would appreciate you taking a short survey. Click here.

New Products!

Online Training

With the recent release of our online training courses for Manta®, Key’s online training program now covers all of our G6 sorting platforms including Optyx®, Tegra®, Manta and ADR® – Automatic Defect Removal System, as well as our Iso-Flo vibratory conveyors. The interactive multimedia courses help you expand the knowledegeability of your team to better operate your Key equipment at peak performance to optimize product quality while maximizing uptime.

And who doesn’t like a buffet? Did you know a one-year subscription to our online training provides your plant with unlimited access to all courses for an unlimited number of students? With our online training, you can have access to Iso-Flo® Shaker, G6 User Interface, G6 Optyx®, G6 Tegra®, Manta® and ADR® 4 & 5 sorter training for ALL your employees for about the same cost as a single three day instructor-led sorter course. As we recover from the recession, you will need people that are trained to operate and maintain your processing equipment efficiently and effectively for maximum performance, to keep up with the increasing demand for quality products. Training.Info@key.net.

Sorter Tips

ADR - Cutterwheel

An ADR is a very specific type of sorter. Designed for the potato industry, it removes defects from strips or French fries. Needless to say, the cutterwheel is a critical component to maintain. We recommend you perform a cutterwheel knife test once a week to check for broken, damaged or stuck knives. The knife test will also help you identify ejector manifold valves that are not firing the knives correctly. On a monthly basis you should remove the cutterwheel to inspect, clean and rebuild it.

Rebuilding a cutterwheel consists of placing the cutterwheel on a special stand and removing the cams, carousels, shims and knives. Prior to re-assembly with new knives, you should inspect the brass tube for nicks and scratches and file them smooth. You should also replace defective valves identified by the knife test you ran prior to removing the cutterwheel.

The cutterwheel is lubricated with water at a rate of 0.1 gpm and the carousel is set to 0.2 gpm. Check and adjust as needed every six months.

Ensuring Product Quality

10 Things you can do to ensure product quality:

Ensure the sorting function is turned on! Check the upper right corner of the user interface. The toggle button on the UI should be green.
Keep it clean! Clean the sorter regularly. Ensure the windows are free of hard water build up. Replace stained belts.
Check your segmentation. In the July issue we discussed segmentation. This is where you define colors and can adjust the color set to identify the colors that match the criteria. This helps the sorter distinguish between background, good products and defects.
Understand your KeyWare® and the settings. For most KeyWare criteria, if the sorter sees something larger than is set, it will eject what is sees. If it is smaller, then it ignores it. Some KeyWare may use size as a criteria. A “short” setting indicates the “minimum” length. A large number here will reject a lot of smaller product that may be acceptable. This is also true with Minor/Major. Minor should always be smaller than Major, but if it is too big, a lot of potentially acceptable product may be ejected. So, bigger is not always better. And, just like making sure sorting is enabled, make sure the sorting criteria are enabled.
Ejector Page Settings. On the UI, the ejectors can be set for delay, duration and width. Delay is how long the system waits from the time a defect is seen to when the ejector fires. Duration is the length of time the ejector fires at a defect. And width is how many pixels to fire at. So a small product like peas would probably have a small ejection width.
Ejection System Adjustments. All sorters have some sort of ejector, either valves that fire air to knock down defects, or ejectors that fire knives to cut out defects (an ADR). Proper adjustment is key to ensuring the proper trajectory of the defect. In addition to the ejectors, some sorters have defect and pass chutes that assist in separation. These need to be properly adjusted for the product trajectory.
The Lighting System. Make sure all the lights/lamps are working properly, and all the lamp tubes or windows are clean.
Cameras/Laser sensors. Ensure the cameras/lasers are normalized or calibrated. You might have to ensure they have been mapped to the lanes, i.e. Learn Lanes.
Electronics. Check the computers and ensure all the cables are snug and the Status Page on the UI shows communications between the components.
Machine Management. Assign an “owner” that is responsible for this list of things. Ensure all personnel that need to work on the sorter are trained; this includes not only operators, but maintenance, sanitation, quality assurance and even managers.

Shaker Tips

Shaker Stress

With the recent release of our online training courses for Manta, Key’s online training program now covers all of our G6 sorting platforms including Optyx, Tegra, Manta and ADR (Automatic Defect Remova)l System, as well as our Iso-Flo vibratory conveyors. The interactive multimedia courses help you expand the knowledegeability of your team to better operate your Key equipment at peak performance to optimize product quality while maximizing uptime.

Other than when a shaker physically breaks, our eyes can’t see the stress an out-of-tune shaker experiences. Stress from running the shaker at a higher stroke than it was designed for is the number one cause of shaker failure. In previous issues we talked about ensuring that the shaker is running in-tune. As a reminder, the “Max Stroke” stenciled on the side is not the design stroke, but rather the redline stroke. Your drawings will indicate the correct design stroke. Since we can’t see this stress, Key has prepared a visual model using finite element analysis to show what the stress of an out-of-tune shaker looks like.

This short video shows the stresses on the frame and bed of an out of tune shaker. We expect there to be some stress where the arm brackets connect to the frame and bed, but you can see that other areas are also experiencing high stress concentrations. Now, take a look at this video of an in-tune shaker. The stress is significantly reduced. By ensuring that your shakers are in tune, you can prevent bed and frame cracks that lead to shaker failure.

Northwest Food Manufacturing and Packaging Expo

We would like to invite you to visit us at the Northwest Food Manufacturing and Packaging Expo in Portland, Oregon January 18-20th.

Download a FREE one day pass to the Solutions Marketplace and stop by just to say “Hello” or talk with us about your processing challenges.