Avoiding a Sticky Situation

The Problem

Machine downtime costs businesses in the region of £180 billion per year, yet more than two thirds of companies lack awareness of when assets are due for maintenance or upgrade. With hidden internal faults often to blame, leveraging technology to provide detailed insight into underperforming or failing machinery is key to keeping lines up and running.

At the heart of the Histon site are the filling machines. Capable of producing hundreds of jars per minute, the fillers are critical to productivity. When one of these lines goes down, it can significantly impact the business and halt operations for weeks at a time.

With a brand new gearbox installed, the site’s Line 2 filler should have been working at optimum performance yet, worryingly, the asset was displaying unusual levels of vibration. 

The Solution

RS Industria was first installed on Line 2 in October 2021. Within weeks, the industrial insight platform had already proved its worth by flagging a near catastrophic fault on an ailing power transfer box.

Now, vibration anomalies on the filler’s gearboxes had begun to trigger alerts, which were sent by text and email to both the customer and RS Industria solutions engineers.

The line had recently benefited from the installation of a new motor gearbox, yet data gleaned from RS Industria sensors revealed vibration levels remained higher than their usual baseline. Though not serious enough to be indicative of imminent and line-stopping failure, the issue flagged demanded further attention.

The customer acted immediately and sent the affected motor gearbox off for repair. This revealed internal bearing stress, indicating the component was in early failure mode. While the machine was still in running condition, had the issue been left undetected for much longer, it would have led to machine failure within months.