The fast-moving electronic and communication technologies
are developing innovations that help operators maintain
plant in the most cost effective way, says ERIKS

Innovation strengthens business and
brings true differentiation but is not
easily achieved. However, despite the
fact that global, household-name innovation
is rare, there is great potential for small-scale
innovative development that can be achieved
when expert manufacturers and suppliers
devise new ways to put their native
technology to good use. So, can UK
manufacturers develop an innovation culture
that will maintain a flow of improvements?
One way to support such a culture is to
focus on, and invest in, existing strengths
and establish centres of excellence to push
forward innovation in all areas of
engineering. As well as creating new
methods of production, state-of-the-art
products and new technologies, innovation
can also help operators maintain plant in the
most cost effective way. For example, there
has been much innovation in condition
monitoring, which has become increasingly
easy to use and this has enabled many
companies to make significant savings.

When ERIKS came to the aid of a wellestablished
company in the food and
beverage sector, we identified a problem that
the company was not previously aware of – a
series of air leaks in compressed air systems.

Using ultrasonic technology, the leaks were
detected in just two days, with no disruption
to production. Our survey data was
compiled and presented in detail, with an
actual financial loss related to each leak. By
acting on our data and implementing our
suggested remedies, the company achieved
savings of £86,000 a year.

Innovations based around the fast-moving
technologies of electronics and
communications could also impact positively
on maintenance. In a similar way to that with
which the retail industry has capitalised on
the on-going communications and
electronics revolution to successfully interact
with its customers via the use of mobile
phones and .coms, the engineering industry
can now capitalise on new technology to
increase operational efficiency. For example,
the potential to gather and share information
that is currently offered by barcodes and
sensors could be usefully exploited by the
engineering industry, particularly in the way
supplies are managed, a process that
currently still involves archaic double entry
and cross-referencing methods.

Our Core Competence Centres illustrate
how ERIKS seeks to innovate, developing
new ideas, technologies and designs that can
be adapted to meet today’s market trends
and needs. One example of this is the ERIKS
Online TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Calculator, which recently earned ERIKS UK
a Sustainability Recognition Award from
Saint-Gobain, the French building materials
manufacturer. The calculator is a piece of
software that uses data relating to an existing
motor to calculate key statistics (such as
energy usage in kilowatt hours and carbon
footprint) to calculate the total lifetime cost
of the available options when choosing to
repair or replace electric motors.

In the future, it looks likely that we will
see much greater use of such tools, not only
because of the capabilities of electronic
technology but also as a result of the
economic pressure to reduce energy
consumption. Without doubt, our shared
human need to tackle the sustainability issue
effectively will keep energy efficiency at the
forefront of technological innovation for the
foreseeable future.

Innovation has long been heralded as the
key to success for UK manufacturers and
what the government hopes to achieve
through promoting it is an ‘innovation
economy’ that helps Britain to boost exports,
rather than stagnate as a public-sectordominated
economy. Effective innovation is
difficult to achieve; it’s hard to know if you’re
getting it right, and even when you think
you’ve got it right it can still go wrong.

But if the results mean preventing
downtime – where even a couple of hours’
delay can result in huge losses – striving for
innovation in products, processes and in the
way we maintain plant has to be well worth
the effort.