WORLD-CLASS COMPANIES NEED WORLD-CLASS

MOTOR MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE

Noah Bethel, CMRP, member IEEE
Vice President of Product Development, PdMA Corporation


Abstract: As one of the most critical factors in
reducing manufacturing costs, motor reliability has
to be taken very seriously if a company wants to
increase its return on investment in motor assets.
Keeping around several spare motors is not a
profitable solution to reliability issues. Rather, the
answer is a cradle-to-grave approach to motor
management and maintenance that begins with
thorough specification and qualification and tracks
assets and the systems in which they are installed
throughout their lifetime. A company that wants to
be world class has no choice but to be world class in
its motor management and maintenance efforts.
Thanks to new turnkey, best-of-breed software at the
technology level, the motor reliability effort has just
become a whole lot easier.


Key Words: Motor Management, Maintenance,
Centralized Maintenance Management Software
(CMMS), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM).

I. INTRODUCTION

Ask a manufacturer how long a motor it makes is
expected to live, and the response will be something like,
20-plus years in the right environment. Ask the same
question in a facility that uses such a motor and the
answer is more likely to be, If we get five years out of
it, well be happy! Why does this discrepancy exist?
Why do motors die of an infant mortality instead of
living to the ripe old age for which they are designed and
built? The answer has to do with the failure to optimize
motor management and maintenance.

Fortunately, in recent years, there has been a shift in
philosophy with regard to motor management and
maintenance. Companies no longer regard it as a cost
center or a necessary evil. Rather, optimizing the
lifespan of motor assets is now considered an
opportunity. Business owners have come to recognize
motor reliability as a decisive variable in overall
profitability and competitiveness. Previously, they
purchased information systems and software programs to
attack the challenge from different vantage points, but
until now, technology has not provided a turnkey
solution for optimizing the motor management and
maintenance processes.

II. DISCUSSION

Four Levels of Software: A Puzzle With Pieces
Missing

Now companies recognize that optimal motor
management and maintenance brings greater reliability.
Greater reliability, in turn, ensures the best return on
asset values, as well as less downtime and therefore
more cost-effective manufacturing. This recognition led
to the birth of reliability centered maintenance (RCM), a
coordinated approach to maintenance, communicated
through a centralized base and directed toward the
overall reliability of assets and machinery. There are four
levels of technology that facilitate this coordinated
approach. They are:

Level 1: Technology-level software.
The software in this category has been limited to
identifying health concerns with motors. It is designed
around widely accepted standards for motor reliability
and delivers alerts and alarms recommended by IEEE
(Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) or
NEMA (National Electric Manufacturers Association).
These serve as a first level of notice that something is
wrong with the motor or with the system in which it is
installed.

Level 2: Information management software.
A handful of software tools are available that are
designed to organize information about a specific asset
so that a supervisor, planner, or technician can rapidly
identify trends or indications of problems related to that
asset. Much of this information amounts to historical
data on a motor allowing personnel to track which
systems the motor has been installed in and what kinds
of problems it has encountered in the past.

Level 3: CMMS, centralized maintenance management
software.
Best-of-breed CMMS packages provide centralized
information management on a companys motor assets in
a variety of technologies electrical, mechanical,
vibration, and others. It is the central location where


work requests are initiated and work orders submitted
and authorized. The software tracks each assets work
request and work order history so that personnel can
look up the status and type of maintenance or repair
work currently being performed on an asset.

Level 4: EAM, enterprise asset management.
Top-level recognition of maintenance as a critical
portion of business decisions is the driver behind popular
business-level software programs such as those produced
by SAP. CMMS software is often linked directly to a
companys EAM platform so that reliability and return
on investment (ROI) of assets can be monitored directly
at the highest levels to ensure cost-effective and
competitive manufacturing. Some EAM programs
include their own CMMS modules, which are, however,
not usually best-of-breed software.

While each of these technology levels is critical to the
overall picture, they only present partial pieces of the
puzzle. What has been missing is a turnkey approach to
tracking motor management and maintenance cradle-to-
grave.

Cradle-to-Grave Approach
The ideal technology supports the entire motor
management and maintenance effort from cradle-to-
grave, without the need to purchase and integrate several
software packages. The process of assuring motor
reliability begins with specification. It continues on to
quality control upon receipt of the asset, then to proper
storage, to pre- and post-installation verification, to
monitoring the asset while operational. The final stage of
the process is having the right information to recognize
when a motor has become afflicted with a terminal
disease or is nearing the end of its life for other reasons.
Then the process begins again with a replacement motor.

1. Precision specification.
Cradle-to-grave management software includes a tool for
precision specification, a growing trend in motor
management. When forward-thinking companies buy a
motor today, they begin with stringent specifications to
make sure it is the highest quality motor available in the
marketplace. They know that it is more cost-effective in
the long run to purchase a superior, highly reliable motor
than to pay a low price up front and then waste resources
on frequent repairs. A cradle-to-grave approach to motor
management includes technology that allows motors to
be pre-qualified at purchase to design out potential
problems from the start.

2. Quality control.
Quality control is a paramount, but often overlooked
component of reliability. Motors are sometimes defective
upon arrival. As such, much testing, troubleshooting and
repair down the road could be avoided with solid quality
control at the time of receipt. The old adage is, dont buy
a car that was built on a Friday. In other words, dont
buy a motor and count on its warranty, hoping for the
best. Starting with a new motor that is 100 percent
perfect will increase its long-term life expectancy and
decrease reliability concerns with its installed
application.

3. Scheduling and tracking.
Scheduling and tracking are important to the efficient
use of a motor in any industrial environment. For
example, just like a human body, a motor needs regular
check-ups and maintenance so that any trends pointing
toward a health problem can be identified and corrected
or reversed before they become terminal illnesses.
Because problems directly or indirectly related to a
motor can be very subtle, thorough tracking of a motors
history can identify negative trends. Such tracking must
be automated because people are generally too busy with
other tasks to keep notes on the history of motors. While
everyone has good intentions about maintenance, it is
generally eclipsed by other priorities. Further, the
population of workers available to perform testing and
analysis on motor assets is dwindling, making the need
for automated scheduling and tracking that much more
vital.

Another important reason for tracking a motors
reliability and maintenance history is to be able to
recognize the point of diminishing return. If a motors
problems and repairs are not tracked, investments may
be made in maintaining and repairing it when it is no
longer cost-effective to do so. For instance, if a motor
has been rewound 13 times, another rewinding is
inadvisable because the motor will be very inefficient
despite this maintenance effort.

The fact is, if maintenance activities are not scheduled
and tracked, they probably will not occur. Furthermore,
in the absence of automated scheduling, analysis and
trending of data to identify conditions leading to lower
reliability, potential problems will be overlooked, and
the plants competitiveness will suffer.

4. Predictive testing and trending.
Testing and trending needs to be predictive rather than
just preventive or reactive. Lets clarify that important
distinction with a medical analogy. Regular medical
checkups are predictive in that the findings may predict
illnesses. A preventive measure would be taking
vitamins on a regular basis to minimize the risk of
unhealthy conditions. However, since the body
eliminates excess vitamins, it is not necessary to be
predictive about taking vitamins, which would amount to


taking a blood test every day. Being reactive about ones
health would mean to stop eating junk food once
diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Like
medical checkups, software-enabled predictive
maintenance is designed to identify conditions that are
conducive to failure or lower reliability, so that they can
be corrected to increase the life expectancy of an asset or
motor.

Cradle-to-grave reliability software tracks the history of
repairs, or mean time between failures, to show faults so
that their source can be identified and remedied. Without
such historical information, repeated repairs or continual
cleaning of a motor may waste a companys resources on
correcting symptoms while missing the real disease.

5. Tracking installation history.
Tracking the history of a motor itself is not enough.
Turnkey reliability software also tracks the history of the
systems in which the motor is installed. This is
particularly important when a motor is used in a number
of different systems, from fans to pumps to compressors.
If a motor fails as part of a pump, is sent to repair,
installed in a fan, fails again, is repaired again, installed
in a compressor, and fails yet again, its important to be
aware that the motor has failed every time and to know
why it failed. Knowing whether it failed for the same or
a completely different reason each time is critical to
making a decision about its future. If analysis shows that
none of the failings are related, the motor may still have
10 years of life and is therefore worth maintaining.
Heres an example. Lets say a motors application
history shows that its last failure was due to a ground
fault when it was installed in a ventilation fan. A review
of the fans history reveals that all of the last three
motors installed in it failed due to insulation to ground.
A common fault mechanism has now been identified and
can be further investigated. A technician is dispatched to
the site and discovers that the motor above the fan is
leaking grease into the fans motor. If the history of the
fan and its motors had not been tracked, several more
motors might have failed, wasting resources on repeated
repairs. Again, it is critical to automate the tracking of
where a motor has been and what problems it has
encountered so that personnel can focus on making the
right decision rather than spending valuable time on
analysis.
New turnkey software at the technology level now
enables the comprehensive management and
maintenance of motors through all these important stages
of an assets life, from precision specification to
recognizing when the motor must be replaced in short,
from cradle-to-grave. The software also delivers that
information to asset management platforms so that senior
management can make decisions that will continue to
increase the companys competitive edge.

A Solution to Last a Lifetime
As one of the most critical factors in reducing
manufacturing costs, motor reliability has to be taken
very seriously if a company wants to increase its return
on investment in motor assets. Keeping around several
spare motors is not a profitable solution to reliability
issues. Rather, the answer is a cradle-to-grave approach
to motor management and maintenance that begins with
thorough specification and qualification and tracks assets
and the systems in which they are installed throughout
their lifetime. A company that wants to be world class
has no choice but to be world class in its motor
management and maintenance efforts. Thanks to new
turnkey, best-of-breed software at the technology level,
the motor reliability effort has just become a whole lot
easier.

V. REFERENCES


1. Nicholas, J. R., Jr., P.E. and Young, R. K.,
Predictive Maintenance Management, 3rd Edition.
Maintenance Quality Systems LLC.

2. Wireman, T., Successfully Utilizing CMMS/EAM
Systems (Maintenance Strategy Series). Industrial
Press, 1
st
edition, August 2008.

3. Wilson, A., PhD., Asset Maintenance Management:
A Guide to Developing Strategy and Improving
Performances, Second Edition. Industrial Press,
Inc.; 1st edition, June 2002.


AUTHOR

Noah Bethel is Vice President of Product Development
with PdMA Corporation. PdMA, based in Tampa,
Florida, is the leader in the field of predictive
maintenance, condition monitoring applications, and the
development of electric motor test equipment for motor
circuit analysis. For further information, visit
www.PdMA.com or call (800) 476-6463.