Three lines of defence
Digitalisation has enabled cement producers to increase the uptime of their equipment as artificial intelligence (AI) has alerted them to current or future equipment failure so swift action can be taken through the plant’s maintenance and repair programme. This reduces lengthy and costly downtime. By Mary Beth Kramer, Kramer Consulting, USA.
Detectable failures at early stages save on repair costs and reduce downtime
Predictive maintenance with artificial intelligence (AI) are heavily-used terms in today’s industrial manufacturing describing the benefits of digitalisation. However, prescriptive maintenance represents the pinnacle approach to getting the most effective, economical use of industrial equipment. Fundamentally, prescriptive maintenance seeks to recognise a potential failure before it fully manifests. This failure defence strategy tops real-time monitoring and robust preventive maintenance with the notion that costly failures and downtime can be avoided or at least minimised. A more complex understanding of plant operation parameters and the ability to analyse differences in operating data in real-time drives AI-based prescriptive maintenance, which can be applied from end-to-end of cement production, from the quarry to the finished cement load-out or bagging operation.
