Maintaining momentum

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.