Des Moines Register
05-21-07
ISU prof studies wear, tear on big equipment
Knowing right time to replace parts can save energy, money
By WILLIAM RYBERG
REGISTER BUSINESS WRITER
Ames, Ia. - Fewer bulldozers will wind up in the junkyard if Sarah Ryan has her
way.
Ryan, 44, an associate professor at Iowa State University, is researching the
costs and benefits of gathering detailed information that would prolong the life of
big pieces of equipment such as earth-moving machines and electricitygenerating turbines. It would help the manufacturers and the environment.
"If you can make better decisions about repair and replacement and
maintenance, then you'll probably tend to use fewer parts and manufacture
equipment less frequently," Ryan said.
Ryan recently received a $25,000 environmental research grant from AT&T Inc.
to study this topic, which is in line with her specialty, a field known as operations
research.
"Operations research is the science of better," said Mark Doherty, executive
director of the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences,
based in Maryland.
"Operations research tries to combine the best with the least," he said. "It's a very
fascinating area."
Ryan's year-long research project will focus on developing mathematical
formulas and computer programs that weigh the costs and benefits of monitoring
wear and tear on machines.
Better monitoring should mean fewer breakdowns and replacement of parts only
when needed, Ryan said.
That should mean longer equipment life and reductions in the number of
machines and parts that need to be manufactured - reducing the consumption of
natural resources and energy and manufacturing impact on the environment. The
costs of the monitoring, however, have to be reasonable, she said.
Ryan's research is designed to show the difference in cost and benefits between
using ordinary measures of equipment use and enhanced methods, such as
sound sensors.
"Enhanced information will cost more," Ryan said. "But you will probably have to
replace (equipment and parts) only when needed, and you'll avoid failures that
happen when you didn't replace in time."
The study is part of the growing field of environmentally sustainable engineering
and industrial ecology, which studies ways to minimize the effects of business
and industry on the environment.
Mark Kushner, dean of the college of engineering at ISU, said the movement
initially was driven by federal environmental regulations.
Business interests in cost-effectiveness and good corporate citizenship have
become more recent drivers, he said.
Corporate and public awareness of industrial ecology are growing because of
concerns about global warming and the costs of oil and energy.
"It is almost a universal concern in industry to become more ecologically sound
and that will ultimately save them money," Kushner said.
Michele Blazek, AT&T's director of environmental health and safety compliance,
said industrial ecology can take many forms. Teleconference calls, for example,
save companies money on travel and reduce the impact of energy use on the
environment, Blazek said.
The information produced by the study is designed to help companies and to
become part of the engineering curriculum at ISU.
The research should help industries that are employing a "product-based
services" or "servicizing" business model. This is when companies manufacture
equipment but don't sell it to the end-users. Instead, servicizing companies lease
the equipment to a client business and provide service and maintenance.
The practice can benefit the manufacturer, the end-user and the environment,
Ryan said. Among the reasons:
- Manufacturers who maintain ownership of a machine are motivated to produce
more durable equipment, reducing production numbers, raw materials used,
energy expended and the amount of worn out material going to junkyards and
landfills.
- Business clients leasing equipment might pay only for the amount of time a
machine is used: Paying by the hour for a turbine that produces electricity, for
example, Ryan said.
- Equipment manufacturers wouldn't make money from sales, but income would
come from leases and maintenance agreements.
Ryan points to photocopying machines as an example.
Copiers "are typically leased with service agreements rather than purchased,"
Ryan wrote in her research proposal. "The service contracts frequently include
replacement of the initial machine with newer or better ones, and the machines
coming off lease are reused extensively."
Copiers have counters that keep track of the number of pages produced, helping
the manufacturer-owner with services such as the replacement of parts known to
wear out after a certain amount of production.
Ryan's research will look into types of monitoring and will include development of
mathematical formulas and computer programs to help manufacturers figure out
the right amount of money to spend on monitoring.
Spending too much means an unnecessary expense. Spending too little means
not having enough information for replacing parts and machines at the right time.
New technologies are available for measuring equipment wear and tear, Ryan
said.
Wear on electrical transformers and systems, for example, can be extrapolated
from information provided by sound sensors that measure vibrations in the
equipment, she said.
Reporter William Ryberg can be reached at (515) 284-8104 or
bryberg@dmreg.com