Page 18 - AutomationNOTEBOOK volume 41

Cover Story continued
Another OEM chimes in with his thoughts in the cover story. “Our equipment customers are perform- ing less scheduled maintenance than in years past”, says Doug Putnam-Pite, director of software develop- ment at Owens Design in Fremont, California. "It therefore behooves us as tool designers to develop robust tool designs that can work for extended periods of time without routine maintenance," he says. "Additionally we need to ensure that the software in the tools can detect errors and fail in a safe state without damaging the mechanisms in the tool."
OEMs are expected to provide their customers with information regarding which items and procedures are needed for preventive maintenance. "In particular, many ask about lubrication points and frequency of replacement for wear items," says Mike Krummey, electrical engineering manager at Matrix, a ProMach brand, in Saukville, Wisconsin in the cover story. "Since the beginning, Matrix focused on designing our machines with ease of cleanability. This allows for a more sanitary operating machine and one that is inherently more reliable as the preventive-maintenance procedures are very simple and fast to perform.
If these things are too difficult and time-consuming, there will be a higher likelihood of those procedures being ignored and not performed."
"At Matrix, our control systems follow the same design intent as the mechanical componentry—simple is inherently more reliable," says Krummey. "If many complicated components and dependencies are present on a machine, there is a greater chance of increased downtime. Control-system reliability is also a function of the number of machine sensors. The fewer sensors, the more reliable the system will be, as you can’t have downtime for a damaged sensor that isn’t on the machine. Control programs can be developed that reduce the number of sensors and thus increase reliability and continuous uptime."
"Maintenance information can be integrated into the control system and provided via the operator screens," says Colwell
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at Fori Automation in the cover story. "Information such
as cycle counts, run time and mainte- nance schedules can be made available, which will help to ensure that preven- tive maintenance
Figure 2: (courtesy of Fori Automation) Maintenance information such as cycle counts, run time and maintenance schedules can be made available to ensure preventive maintenance is completed on schedule.
Cover Story www.automationnotebook.com | Issue 41
is completed within the expected time frame. Additional maintenance information of this
sort can be pushed
to a MES and other maintenance databas- es and dashboards (Figure 2)."
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