KODAK MOTOR SHOP NOW MAKES "HOUSE CALLS" PART OF NEW PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE ORIENTATION
ROCHESTER, NY -- It's not "business as usual" any more at Eastman Kodak's Motor Shop here in Kodak Park. Now Bob Ellis and Rich Kozuch, motor shop repair technicians, make "house calls" to their customers...carrying a portable tester in an attache case.
The tester in their attache case is the Motor Circuit Evaluator (MCE™) System 3000, a self-contained portable electric motor circuit analyzer manufactured by the PdMA Corporation, Tampa, FL. The MCE tester is a crucial element in the Motor Shop's newly-established predictive maintenance program.
Predictive maintenance is part of the new vocabulary and new direction brought by David Kirkpatrick, maintenance supervisor, electric motor services. Since assuming management responsibility for the motor shop in 1991, Kirkpatrick has encouraged his 18 staff members to adjust to the new realities facing motor maintenance departments.
"We're in the midst of a paradigm shift," said Kirkpatrick. "Our primary focus is the satisfaction of our 700+ customers -- the other plant departments and operations here at Kodak Rochester. We must deliver superior quality at a low cost."
The Changing Climate
The scope of the motor shop's services is impressive. The
2,000-acre Kodak Park is much like a small city, right down to
being self-sufficient in its water and electricity supplies. It
takes approximately 90,000 motors above 1 hp to keep the Park
functioning. Approximately 3,300 motors are in inventory in the
motor shop itself.
The shop's customer base occupies the full maintenance spectrum -- from the traditional reactive mode at one end through preventive in the center; and now a shift to predictive. "That's where we change the paradigm," he said. "We need to leave the shop and get out with the customers."One of Kirkpatrick's first challenges in managing motor shop operations was the development of a business plan and preparation of a competitive bid for Kodak Park's motor maintenance business. With industry trends emphasizing energy efficiency, he knew there would be a downturn in repairs on AC motors. Kirkpatrick saw that maintenance excellence through aggressive outreach was what the future held.
After benchmarking with outside vendors, the shop competed for and won the Kodak Park business through increased efficiencies and other value-added strategies. Two immediate developments were the initiation of on-site maintenance and the planned procurement of an MCE tester.
Selecting a Tester
"One way we describe our responsibilities is 'management of
the life cycle of our asset base,' concentrating on reliability,
availability and maintain-ability," noted Kirkpatrick. His
business plan called for predictive maintenance as an important
element of customer service. Three selection criteria were
established for the purchase of the testing equipment:
portability, usability off line and availability of a data base
for trending.
PdMA's MCE Tester met all three criteria, and was selected for purchase by the shop technicians. The lightweight (17-pound) MCE Tester is battery-powered, requiring no outside power source. Tests are non-destructive, conducted with low-voltage and low-current systems. Designed for QA, tracking and trouble shooting tasks, it furnishes diagnostic results and trendable data on the insulation system, power circuit, stator, rotor, armature, field and resistor bank.
The MCE tests all major motor types: induction, synchronous,
DC and wound rotor; and can identify such faults and conditions
as broken/cracked rotor bars and end rings; eccentricity; high
resistance connections; insulation system faults; open or shorted
windings; phase-to-phase and coil-to-coil leakage paths; poor or
incorrect rework and shorted commutator segments.
The MCE Tester is available with WinVis™ software, a
user-friendly Windows™ interface, an important feature for
repair technicians with limited computer training. The software
offers a complete "Help" system, and permits quick
database setup based on the plant layout; fast entry or
duplication of nameplate data; testing and assessment of a
variety of motors in the field; the generation of graphs, charts
and reports; and the exporting of data to other applications.
Applications and Results
Announcement of the MCE Tester's availability was made through
presentations to the Manufacturing, Engineering & Maintenance
Council, consisting of representatives of various maintenance
departments; face-to-face meetings with customers and meetings of
the Technical Information Exchange Committee.
Kozuch and Ellis have also made presentations to mechanics and electricians that have been educational as well as beneficial to marketing efforts. The MCE runs the standard test in less than three minutes and immediately displays the results on the screen. Charts and graphs are instantly accessible in the field. "We sit down with customers afterward to discuss readings and plans to prevent unscheduled interruptions," said Kozuch. "Now, they've become much more interested in predictive maintenance and trending."
One customer who doesn't need persuading is Frank Tricamo, maintenance supervisor of Kodak's chemical waste treatment plant. Tricamo had attended one of the Motor Shop seminars and has requested MCE tests since that time. "We're always being challenged to do things smarter and more efficiently, and the MCE tester does just that," Tricamo said. "We must keep improving so we can continue to reduce the cost of the 'yellow box' going out the gate."
The Motor Shop staff continue to gain credibility within the organization with their troubleshooting activities. In Kodak Park's Power House, Kozuch was called to check a 1,000 hp motor. After noting that the resistance readings weren't balanced at the starter, he broke the motor "T" leads from the line leads at the motor connection box, and tested the motor itself. When the readings indicated that the motor was fine, the leads were thoroughly cleaned and reconnected at the motor connection box. The subsequent reading from the starter to the motor was normal, indicating that the contaminated leads had been the problem.
"What would have resulted if we hadn't cleaned the leads was heat build up," said Kozuch. "Eventually, we could have lost the motor and shut down the power plant."
Kirkpatrick, Ellis and Kozuch have been almost too successful in introducing customers to the MCE Tester. Initially, they had planned to look at critical processes: which motors, if failed, would shut a process down; as well as utility motors. The response of most managers was to request that all their other motors be processed as well. "That's what drove our decision to purchase the second tester," said Kirkpatrick. "We need to keep one here in the shop to 'stand in the doorway' of all incoming and outgoing work."
For the near future, Kirkpatrick looks forward to establishing a regional group of MCE Tester users, as well as an expansion of his benchmarking activities. He also plans to get his personnel out on the road full time, so he can increase the focus of on-site customer service and perform more trending of test results. "We can hardly afford not to, when you consider the savings of a 'planned outage' as opposed to an emergency outage, with its loss of product, staff down time and emergency repair costs," he concluded.
Eastman Kodak Company is the world's leader in imaging, giving customers the power to take, make, store and use pictures through conventional and advanced silver halide imaging, as well as digital and electronic imaging. Kodak markets a range of imaging products in more than 150 countries.
The PdMA Corporation is a predictive maintenance company which also offers advanced motor circuit evaluation, full lubricant analysis, maintenance program analysis, and predictive maintenance training.
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