How can you create a preventive maintenance schedule for pumps in Plant Operations?

Having assessed numerous pumps, I've found it pivotal to begin by evaluating their condition, performance, and significance in operations. My approach involves employing diverse inspection methods like vibration analysis and thermography to detect potential issues. Reviewing manuals and maintenance records adds depth to the assessment. This comprehensive evaluation helps categorize pumps by priority—ensuring critical ones get careful attention. This experience-driven framework optimizes resource allocation, ensuring pumps perform reliably, and safeguarding seamless plant operations.

In my experience, the first thing to do is to review your operational history of the pumps being evaluated. What are the problems that are causing reduced performance? Are the pumps following their own mean time between failure instead of your maintenance schedule? What is their performance improvement or decrease following maintenance? Next look for tools to address the problem. Their may be improvements in the seal or packing design that may apply to your pumps. Visit the maintenance shop to view the disassembled parts and assure yourself that issues are being addressed. Have a clear idea of what performance you are expecting and communicate that clearly.

1. Follow the manufactures maintenance guidelines. 2. Set and stick to your schedule, for Hourly, Daily, weekly checks. 3. Document all checks. 4. Look for trends. i.e. changes in pressure, filter blockages, noise, vibration etc. Document these changes. 5. Put clear indicators on your gauges, so you can see at a glance if there is an issue. 6. If you have more than one supply pump. Alternate the pumps regularly, this will keep the seals lubricated & stop valves from ceasing. These are just a few tips to keep your system healthy.

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a very useful technique if applied rightly that is break down of troublesome equipment/system in sub-systems, devising the mode of failures, its frequency and the consequences and devising the corrective actions. This study of failures and root cause analysis leading to corrective actions must be conducted by an expert facilitator accompanied by the maintainers and operators of the specific equipment/system followed by the application of corrective actions implied during the study. Otherwise, the desired outcome might not be achieved.

Read the manual. Ideally before you even purchase the pump. Remember that for equipment in Hazardous Areas failing to comply with manufacturers operational and maintenance recommendations may invalidate its certification.

Always follow OEM recommendations and create your maintenance plan and schedule around that information. Most equipment manufacturers will be unable to assist with troubleshooting if their recommendations have not been followed and could void any kind of warranty. Once that information is established, you can make adjustments to maintenance plans based on previous experience or breakdowns that can anticipate future degradation.

Start with manufacturer's recommendations and review the standards in your own industry. Also request free resources from "Solutions Providers" like Applied or Motion Industries that can bring in trainers and experts and work directly with the manufacturers.

Internet searches for other users and their perspective and histories of identical pumps can expose or reveal vital information. Industry sharing was critical to the nuclear industry to improve performance, head off crisis and ensure pumps are operated with their design parameters. When comparing notes be sure the researched pumps are used or closely compare to the operating parameters of your pumps usage, criticality.

This is the most important factor need to be set in right way and monitored too. Also, right and competent people to attend the PM as per the SMP.

ROUTINE Inspection& monitoring of machine - periodic top of bearing oil cup - frequent cleaning of suction stainer - scheduled for pump changeover for overhauling

Divide the pumps in two groups. 1. Critical Service Pumps having online condition monitoring system 2. Essential Services & Balance of Plant pumps without online condition monitoring system 1. Critical Pumps Maintenance Strategy: Keep watch on operating conditions and health assessment data extracted from continuous monitoring system and plan preventive and corrective maintenance for upcoming opportunity or during the turnaround. 2. Essential & B.O.P. Pumps Maintenance Strategy: Develop daily & Weekly surveillance plan to monitor the bearing vibrations, temperatures and flow conditions. Then plan PM/CM activity subject to observation of deficiency or fault detected during the daily or weekly surveillance operations. Stop fixed interval PM.

There should be a proper maintenance schedule for the whole month and that should be followed strictly because once things are planned then resources can be utilised more effectively and efficiently. The second responsible person of maintenance should use 5 Why's analysis to trace the root cause of the problem and make sure that should not happen in future

All above is absolutely true. One more factor is the competency and trading of those performing and assigning maintenance tasks. Sad to say untrained (I am being kind here) can damage integral parts equipment. Of course there are cost benefit considerations depending on criticality of pumps and the services or processes they are used for.

Es importante crear un programa de mantenimiento que sea claro, detallado y actualizado, y que se ajuste a las necesidades y prioridades de cada bomba. También es importante asignar las tareas de mantenimiento de forma eficiente y equitativa, y comunicarlas de forma efectiva a todas las personas involucradas.

Absolutely necessary and essential. The better quality of information in entered in the system or history the better reliability assessments could be done.

Critical is knowledge of parts availability locally. Includes lead time of critical replacement parts if maintenance discovers impending failures. Care in point when I was the maintenance manager for a large high speed food processing plant. A foreign supplied food processing machine could not supply critical replacement parts for over three weeks. Very costly in product and experienced operators sat fairly idle for a time.

Muy válido porque con esa información de cada equipo uno puede determinar acciones de mantenimiento correctivos para no afectar la producción.

Some of important points are as follows 1) Track and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) such as flow rates, pressure levels, and power consumption before and after maintenance. This helps in assessing the effectiveness of the maintenance work. 2) use vibration measure and analyse it to access Unusual vibrations can indicate misalignments, imbalances, or issues with bearings. 3) Evaluate the energy efficiency of the pump system by comparing energy consumption data before and after maintenance.

Frequency of Maintenance: Determine the frequency of preventive maintenance tasks based on factors such as operating conditions, pump criticality, and historical performance.

Seguimiento de la temperatura en las partes acopladas y no acopladas con cámaras termográficas. Así como a los sistemas de alimentación eléctrico de los grupos de bombeo, determinado si esta balanceado o no.

To create a preventive maintenance schedule for pumps in Plant Operations, start by identifying all pumps and their criticality. Then, establish maintenance intervals based on factors like manufacturer recommendations, historical data, and operational demands. Develop a checklist for each maintenance task, including inspection, lubrication, and testing. Utilize a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to schedule and track tasks, ensuring timely completion. Regularly review and adjust the schedule based on performance feedback and evolving operational needs.

It's also incredibly important to update maintenance procedures after work has been performed. Doubly so when your procedures were written prior to equipment installation, or after equipment has been altered. Many maintenance procedures are just boilerplate, which can be a source of confusion if the operator/maintainer is unfamiliar with the system. Procedures should be only be authored once, and then formally edited (not completely rewritten) every time a deficiency or potential improvement is noted; procedure alterations and pitfalls should never become tribal knowledge.

Keep you oil temp within OEM specifications and clean within OEM specifications Take regular oil samples and have them analyzed for contaminants and moisture. 3 things that will shorten pump life (1) contaminates (dirt) (2) excess heat. (3) moisture (water)

Plant operators should be trained in look listen feel smell and taste skills (smell and taste pick up potential minor leaks by being in proximity of pump not licking it!) Pumps well-being should be part of routine plant tours. Additionally portable temperature probes, vibration monitors and gas detectors could be used in this process. Their tour log should state all good or identify areas of concern to be posted to shift log and escalated by supervisor as appropriate.

Creating a preventive maintenance plan for plant pumps draws from my hands-on experience. It entails careful steps: inventorying pumps, assessing their condition and priority levels, and deeply studying manufacturer guidelines. Tailoring maintenance checklists based on this data is key. Setting intervals, using condition-based monitoring, and continual refinement are crucial. Through experience, this approach ensures pumps operate at their best, reducing downtime and maximizing overall efficiency.

Back to basic fundamental, talk to the people that operates the pump. They can give information that is not in the maintenance manual, not in the pump manufacturer manual. Pump behaves differently according to the way we use it. With this information, we can fine tune our pm for the pump.

Asset Criticality Analysis: Perform an asset criticality analysis to prioritize pumps based on their impact on plant operations. This helps allocate resources effectively.

One thing I have found useful is by engaging with the maintenance team, responsible for executing the maintenance tasks, on their physical finds of the internal parts, and their recommendations, just as we referencefrom the manufacturerguidelines, system data such as the vibration. And this should also include the people like Operators, contractors on how these pumps are operated.