Wireless monitoring cuts costs for food and biochemical plant

With its diverse markets and customers, the food and biochemical company must always ensure that its machines run smoothly. The company has been using Schaeffler’s offline and online monitoring solutions for its most critical machines.

However, in searching for a comprehensive condition monitoring solution, the plant’s maintenance team decided on the OPTIME wireless condition monitoring solution, which met its increasingly demanding applications.

Challenge 
Sustainable products, such as bioplastics, are becoming increasingly important. At the biochemical plant, complex fermentation processes are carried out to produce derivative acid (e.g. lactic acid) which customers use in a variety of ways, such as a food additive for bakeries, breweries and confectionery products, as well as for biodegradable packaging. During the production process, the machines are subjected to extreme stress, so production throughput must be optimised in order to avoid unplanned machine downtime. 

The expansion of the plant in recent years presented a new challenge for maintenance: loose meshing of the machine gears. This meant that tremendous stress on the gears and resulted in accelerated wear and tear, as well as a risk of incorrect lubrication. Therefore, the maintenance management team turned to Schaeffler for a comprehensive solution.

Read the full article in DPA's July issue