Boosting Your Bottom Line: Forget Guesswork — Tracking Boosts Reliability

Improving your plant’s reliability is a gift that keeps on giving. In implementing effective motor management practices, you make your job as a maintenance professional easier by improving operating and production performance, lowering maintenance costs and reducing equipment downtime. The first step toward greater relia-bility is to conduct a plant-wide motor survey that records basic, but crucial, data about your motor fleet. 

It’s worth the time 
Although conducting a motor survey and implementing a tracking program may seem daunting, remember that it’s not necessary to survey every motor in the facility. If your site has many motors, it could make sense to start with equipment running the most critical applications, units with the longest run-times or highest failure rates, or simply the oldest ones. 

Maintaining a log of motor repairs through a tracking program can help flag opportunities to repair or replace motors before failure, during scheduled downtime. Some facilities have reported that it’s not unusual for a motor to be repaired and then installed in a different application in another part of the plant. Tracking programs record the unit’s history to help predict reliability or prevent misapplication. Your local motor-service expert can help you with a motor inventory.

Free help is available
There are also a number of motor tracking resources available that will not only make your life easier, but are free to download. One of the best-known tools is MotorMaster+ 4.0*, created by Washington State University through a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE). This software is a comprehensive program that enables you to create a detailed motor database. You can use the database to make data-driven decisions for long-term savings. It also contains important manufacturer information for more than 20,000 motors. 

What’s next?
A motor survey and tracking program are the first steps in developing a motor management plan. Simply put, you can only manage a motor fleet if you know what’s in it and monitor changes over time. That’s where Motor Decisions Matter^SM (MDM) can help. 

The MDM Motor Planning Kit, available as a free download at www.motorsmatter.org, explains the fundamentals of motor management and helps you get started. The MDM 1·2·3 Approach software tool includes a motor inventory sheet that runs simple calculations and provides motor reports and tags, using sample data from customer plants and facilities. Additionally, MDM has a comprehensive case-study library with numerous examples of how customers saved money and energy by implementing motor management strategies, beginning with a motor inventory. Start tracking today, and enjoy the long-term benefits of increased reliability. LMT

* MotorMaster+ 4.0 is available here.

The Motor Decisions Matter (MDM)campaign is managed by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE), a North American nonprofit organization that promotes energy-saving products, equipment and technologies. For further information, contact MDM staff at mdminfo@cee1.org or (617) 589-3949.