“From the labor side, we’ve been able to, once we installed the 3561s, eliminate all outside contractors that are coming in and doing vibration analysis. That’s a cost to some of the plants and over $30,000 a year in some of our larger facilities.”
– Rip Talwar, Senior Maintenance Engineer for Martinrea Metallics
Labor costs
Planned downtime
Equipment reliability- Reduced Maintenance Costs
- Converted unplanned downtime to planned maintenance
- Increased equipment reliability
Martinrea Metallics, a global automotive supplier designs, develops and manufactures aluminum products; metal parts, assemblies and modules; and complex fluid management systems. These all come together in Martinrea’s more than 9,000,000 square feet of manufacturing space.
Rip Talwar is the Senior Maintenance Engineer
for Martinrea Metallics and is responsible for implementing best practices throughout Martinrea’s metallics plants in North America—17 plants in total. “Our direction was to get best practices throughout all the plants,” Talwar said. “Equipment reliability is our number-one focus.”
Martinrea was looking for an Early Warning system for their assets. The cost of downtime in the automotive industry is very high and the company was looking for a remote monitoring solution which could bolster their implementation of the total productive maintenance program (TPM) IATF Section 8.5.2.1. Rip met with Rob Yeager, Senior Customer Success Manager from Fluke. For Martinrea’s needs, they landed on Fluke 3561 FC Vibration Sensors.
These wireless, compact sensors improve uptime by enabling team members to make data-driven decisions from their desks, the shop floor, or anywhere else they have wireless access. They capture one data point every 90 seconds and allow for remote viewing of real-time, historical triaxial vibration, and surface temperature data.
“We’re really excited about it. I think Martinrea as
a whole is very excited about it,” said Talwar. “My group has been tasked with figuring out a way to get equipment health across all of the facilities within
Martinrea, and we started using the 3561 vibration sensors.” The next step in their plan is to install the sensors in their plants in Mexico.
Get data right away
Fluke 3561 FC Vibration Sensors notify users of changes in conditional rotational forces that, left unchecked, can damage equipment. Once 3561 FC sensors are installed, they start collecting data in under an hour. Sensor installation is simple, and the data is easy to interpret.
Sure enough, shortly after the sensors were installed at Martinrea’s location in Vaughan, Ontario, Talwar’s team began getting notifications. They sent maintenance staff out to look at the assets.
“They were able to replace a motor that was probably in the tens of thousands of dollars. We were able to replace as a planned downtime event as opposed to an unplanned downtime event, when the cost would have been much higher,” Talwar said.
Reduced maintenance costs
The sensors have helped Martinrea dramatically reduce maintenance costs. In addition to reducing expensive unplanned downtime and replacement costs, Martinrea has experienced over $30,000 in reduced labor costs. Talwar explained that vibration contractors aren’t necessary for Martinrea now—and that they are getting continuous monitoring at a fraction of the costs they paid before.