Reliability improvement saving £425,000

March undertook a reliability improvement project resulting in significant client savings and improvement to the reliability of their critical assets.

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History

The steel belt is one of the client’s most critical assets. It transports raw material into storage at a rate of around 400 tonnes per hour. After a critical failure in 2016, failure data analysis showed that the belt had a mean time between failure of 9 months.

Solution

March undertook a reliability improvement project on the steel belt to rectify the failures.

Analysis indicated that the common failure mode was a joint failure, which at the time was a riveted joint. After consultation with the manufacturer, March implemented a welded joint to improve the reliability of this common failure mode. The analysis also indicated that the belt was subject to persistent tracking issues. To rectify this the March team designed tracking rollers which pivot when the belt tracks over.

A change in the roller position is initiated by an elasto-mounted tracking roller on the frame, manufacturing the roller from brass ensured that the roller would be the wearable part as opposed to the belt’s edge. In addition the team added spring mounted brass rollers which would constantly apply light pressure to the belts edge to align it centrally.

The redesign meant March had to re-assess the current maintenance regime, which led to the implementation of on-condition tasks for the new rollers and an NDT test on the welded steel joint.

Results

The steel belt is still in use today which means an improvement in reliability from 9 months to a minimum of 4 years.

The cost of a new belt was £80,000, making the cost saving for the client roughly £425,000.

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