Predictive maintenance: everyone talks about it and seems to know how to do it. But what is it really? Enos Postma takes us into the world of assets, predictive maintenance, statistics and algorithms and explains how to implement predictive maintenance in six clear steps.

Where maintenance is concerned, the urge to achieve Continuous Improvement and learn from mistakes (“don’t make the same mistake twice”) is vital: economically, technically and from the point of view of competition. Greening is an extra motivator for the application of Continuous Improvement: sustainability and Continuous Improvement go hand in hand.

Exploring the roadmap of preventive to prescriptive maintenance,  this blog presents a brief explanation of involved technologies and their potential, showing how, in Stork’s vision, collaboration between humans and machins can evolve in equal relationship to the benefit of asset owners.

When it comes to climate change, this is the decade of truth. Without taking additional measures, temperatures on earth will rise exponentially. The expectation is that global energy use will increase by 20 to 25% in the next 15 years as a result of population growth and economic development.

An essential step in welding and manufacturing metal constructions and equipment is the heat treatment process. During heat treatment, the material is heated up and cooled down, using predefined methods to achieve the desired mechanical properties like metallurgical structure, hardness, toughness, strength, etc.

The industry is vital for the competitive position of Europe in the world, but it emits large quantities of CO2. Refineries, chemical and steel companies are concentrated mainly in industrial clusters. Still, there are also many smaller companies like papermills and the food and beverage industry that need to reduce emissions too.

For decades, Stork has provided asset lifecycle solutions for different industries and has been the driving force of many technological revolutions and supported the energy transitions of the last century.

Using hydrogen as a fuel source to generate heat or electricity can greatly reduce or even avoid the need to burn fossil fuels for this purpose. However, because the properties of hydrogen and fossil fuels (such as natural gas), switching from one to the other can’t be done at the flip of a switch.

A radical transformation is needed in the way energy is produced and used to fulfil societal needs. Clean renewables will gradually replace fossil fuels. Continuing to work on gradual, incremental changes will not be enough to tackle climate change. We have to look for exponential growth of solutions with the greatest future decarbonisation potential. 

Most companies within the process industries are actively adopting Asset Performance Management (APM) technologies. As different sectors embrace an APM analytics methodology, each asset owner is taking a unique journey – but everyone is moving in a cohesive direction. 

“I really regret that I could not work in such a workshop much earlier.” One of the E&I technicians at the Vynova location in Beek (NL) is speaking. He recently reorganized the workshop according to the 5S method, together with the colleagues in his team. He is proud that this is the reference now for other colleagues, who each approach their workplace in the same way.

In this case, I will walk you through the what and how of HPTs based on experience gained from an international project where I am in the role of team leader. It will give you an idea of how to build an HPT. And how to ensure it works optimally. Building and maintaining such a team is always a challenge.