Gestión integrada del mantenimiento y la energía para la prevención de fallos en equipos de plantas de proceso

Abstract

Abstract In every manufacturing facility, the main objective of the Maintenance Department is to ensure the correct functional condition of the equipment, with the aim of obtaining its maximum availability, which is, overall, an improvement to the service given to their main client (Operations Department), as well as an improvement, which is not less important, of the plant's safety, and therefore, a decrease in the risk. A consequence of the improvement in the reliability of the equipment is that the optimization of their functional conditions directly leads to a decrease in the production costs. Likewise, the functional improvement of the equipment is directly related with a reduction of energy consumption by the equipment used in the manufacturing processes, and therefore, an improvement of the company's direct costs. The industry finds itself in a moment of change, where the management of the information from all the different areas of the company must be managed efficiently and in real-time, to be able to be more flexible and atend to the client's demands, which are becoming more specific, in the most efficient manner. Therefore, the interconnectivity in real-time among all the management areas of the company, as well as the production equipment and auxiliary services, are the key aspect of this change. This industrial evolution is known as Industry 4.0 (Chapter 3). A commitment for a high level of automation and digitalization of the factories, resorting to the intensive use of the Internet and virtual networks, with the aim of modernizing the factories to transform them into Smart Factories, characterized by real-time inter-communication between the different production equipment or utilities that are involved in the production, procurement and logistic chains, which make up, in the end, the entire supply chain. Since the year 2012, the Takasago Company and the University of Murcia have signed an agreement to carry out a research project for the development of "new" operational methodologies for predictive maintenance of the dynamic equipment this company has in its industrial plant located in Murcia (Spain). This thesis has been performed within the framework of this research project (PREBYA-2012), which has resulted in the development of new techniques and strategies with regards to the real needs of monitoring and diagnosing of the equipment in the predictive maintenance plan, in the process of managing the production chain logistics as a function of the functional condition of the equipment at any given moment, and the implementation of innovative applications for the management, processing and presentation of the information collected, so that it will reach all the personnel involved in real-time. The thesis has been structured around three main research lines. In the first line of research (Chapter 4), a simple, operational and efficient procedure has been developed for the quantification of the "functional Status" of the dynamic equipment as a consequence of the results obtained in the diagnostic tests of the predictive maintenance, thanks to which, the understanding of the real status of each piece of equipment will be simple and operational, even for the people that are not involved in the day-to-day operations of the maintenance department. After the evaluation of the status of the dynamic equipment, the second research line (Chapter 5) has been focused on the implementation of a dynamic management system of the measurement intervals based on criticality and "functional status" of the equipment that was previously developed. Criticality of the equipment will be calculated as a function of operational, service and maintainability criteria. Finally, the third line of research (Chapter 6) has been focused on the monitoring of the equipment that was deemed critical. A method had been developed to identify anomalous situations through real-time monitoring of the electric parameters (power, current, voltage¿) or through monitoring of mixed indicators, which were the result of combining process or production operational data (data from the MES and DCS systems) with monitoring of electric parameters. Likewise, and as the basic pillar of this thesis and in accordance with the current philosophy of Industry 4.0, the relevant information obtained through the systems that were developed and implanted has been integrated into the information management system of the company (ERP, MES and DCS). This makes it easily accessible, 100% operational and shared among the different decision-making levels in real-time, fulfilling, then, the premises of the "Smart Factories". Also, and thanks to the utilization of the company's existing platforms, the generation of alternative or complementary platforms has been avoided, which would have made the managing of this information more difficult.