Automotive manufacturing: Stamping press monitoring and predictive maintenance with moneo
Stamping presses are critical assets often used to manufacture automotive components.
How the moneo IIoT software platform enables real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance of stamping presses
The manufacturer wanted more insight into the condition of their stamping presses to better inform their maintenance program. Implementing a full ifm solution provided immediate business impact and transitioned the maintenance program from a preventative to a predictive schedule.
Benefits
 |
 |
 |
| Reduced unplanned downtime | Enabled predictive maintenance | Reduced production costs |
Estimated savings
Prevented $500,000 in maintenance costs and 5 weeks of press downtime.
Based on a 20% chance of a catastrophic failure and associated costs of a press rebuild, the investment achieved an estimated Return On Investment (ROI) in just 2.5 months.
Project Goal
Optimize maintenance plans
The automotive supplier was looking to rebuild a large transfer press that had a handful of mechanical issues. A full rebuild of a press this size is extremely costly and time-consuming. They partnered with ifm to implement a condition monitoring system on the stamping press that would alert the team if mechanical issues occurred after the rebuild. To ensure centralized data collection, the project had a requirement of interoperability with all existing IT infrastructure, including SCADA and CMMS.
Simpify implementation
To evaluate the speed of deployment fairly, the customer decided to start the implementation of data monitoring dashboards simultaneously using two different platforms. The customer started the moneo implementation at the same time as they initiated the process of creating the dashboards through their internal IT team within the existing SCADA system.
Stamping press maintenance challenges
Mechanical stamping presses are commonly used in aerospace, automotive, and appliance industries. Large presses are expensive to replace and maintain but are uniquely suited for heavy-duty metal forming due to their accuracy and versatility in high-speed, high-volume production. Because of the size and complexity of these machines, various assets on the press are susceptible to significant downtime events, including motors, flywheels, bearings, and linkages.
With significant production demands, even preventative maintenance is difficult to schedule. The customer needed to gain visibility into machine conditions and alert to impending failures, in order to optimize maintenance plans before they occurred during production. Whether planned or unplanned, stamping press downtime leads to:
- Weeks or months of lost production revenue
- Just in Time (JIT) production penalties
- Outsourced production during maintenance
- Maintenance and labor costs of reconfiguration
While downtime for maintenance reduces production time, catastrophic failures of equipment result in months of downtime and outsourcing of production until the root cause is identified and fixed. Ongoing maintenance of stamping presses is required to ensure presses remain operational. Many companies complete maintenance based on timed intervals or by the number of unplanned stops, but these are usually not determined by machine data.
With improved insight into machine conditions in real time, the customer would also be able to verify that presses were set up correctly before restarting production.
Simplifying implementation
One licensed engineer installed the VSE vibration edge controllers, 8 IO-Link masters, and accelerometers. The entire hardware and software implementation took a few hours, and they started trending sensor data to customized dashboards in just one day. The initial setup focused on vibration monitoring of the stamping press, and later expanded to include real-time monitoring of:
- Motor and gear assembly
- Compressed air
- Linkage and bearing condition
- Lubrication quality
Results
At this point, the IT engineer decided to stop the SCADA system integration. It would still take weeks to implement the same visualization and data analysis as achieved in the moneo IIoT software platform through their existing SCADA system. This test determined that implementing moneo reduced implementation time from weeks to hours.
The installed ifm VSE vibration edge controllers.
Optimizing maintenance with real-time data
Within the first month, the engineering team received an alert in moneo that a linkage in the left corner of the press was 20 °F higher than the other corners of the press. When the maintenance team investigated, they discovered that the die was not mounted in the middle of the press. By favoring the left side, the counterbalance could not support the weight and extra load, resulting in an overheated bushing. Off-center loading is a major press issue that is difficult to detect, but moneo helped to proactively catch the problem and avoid an estimated $500,000 in maintenance costs and 5 weeks of downtime.
moneo dashboards visualizing machine health information. These show the initial alarm notifying the user that temperature had exceeded the upper limit. After maintenance, the temperature returns to the normal operating range.
Due to the plug-and-work principle of ifm sensors and embedded IO-Link technology, it is simple to add new data sources to production and collect that data in the moneo IIoT software platform. All ifm IO-Link sensors can be parameterized using the free moneo configure software download, but those with an active moneo licensed subscription will find it conveniently accessible from their full software suite homepage. Reducing integration and installation time makes asset monitoring simple and easy.
Conclusion
The initial installation provided immediate results in the first two months, verifying the ifm approach of proving value of a predictive maintenance project as quickly as possible. This approach helped the customer by:
- Optimizing maintenance plans with visualizations of diagnostic data
- Reducing complexity with intuitive hardware and software
- Simplifying implementation without IT development
The customer verified that the concept worked for the stamping press application before investing significant time or capital expenditure into a new technology stack. With machine health dashboards created in hours, the engineering team could immediately visualize and gain insight into the status of the stamping press. The interoperability of ifm sensors and the moneo IIoT software platform simplified the transfer of data to SCADA and CMMS systems without interfering with production operations. Ultimately, the customer implemented the solution and proved business impact within just a few months, showing how simple it is to get started.
