Anaheim Convention : Maintenance Becomes a High-Tech Industry

With a tool belt hanging low on one hip and a rag in his back pocket, Joe Lugwrench has kept America’s factories humming since the Industrial Revolution.

He doesn’t anymore.

As the exhibitors and speakers at the annual National Plant Engineering and Maintenance Show and Conference make clear, repairing and maintaining the machinery that keeps American industry moving is rapidly becoming an advanced technology function employing fiber optics, computers and sophisticated instruments.

The three-day convention concludes today at the Anaheim Convention Center.

More Attention to Maintenance

Increasingly mindful that Japan’s economic prowess has been achieved, in part, by carefully maintained factories, American industrialists are paying more attention than ever before to plant maintenance, said Leo Spector, general chairman of the conference and editor of Plant Engineering magazine.

“The more automated and expensive the equipment, the less downtime you can afford,” Spector said.

To reduce that downtime, an array of advanced technology maintenance tools are on display at the Anaheim Convention Center. Lasers and fiber optics are now involved in what have been the most “low-tech” aspects of maintenance, such as checking pipes for cracks and corrosion, Spector said. The next step in industrial maintenance, he said, is “artificial intelligence, that’s the next wave.”

On display at the show are devices that monitor machinery by vibration analysis, infrared sensing and sonic measurement. These are tools that allow what Spector calls “predictive maintenance,” the ability to calculate when machinery should be serviced and thus avoid failures and long repair downtime.

150 Companies

At every booth, salespeople for each of the 150 companies represented at the show sought to persuade visitors that their products were faster, stronger or more efficient than ever before.

Roger Johnson, for instance, was positively euphoric about the radiant optical heater he developed. The heat focusing device is 300% more powerful than ordinary heaters, Johnson said, an efficiency that is achieved by mounting a compound reflective lens over the heating unit, thus magnifying and focusing the heat. The lens technology was developed after studying how a lobster’s compound reflective eye works. The heater is a “downright copy” of a lobster eye, Johnson said, “but they don’t have lawyers so it’s my patent.”

Visitors seemed to find this and the other displays worth the trip.

“It (the show) gives us a look at new and existing equipment,” said John Young, a supervisor at Southern California Gas Co.’s fabrication shop in El Monte.

Not all the exhibitors were pushing advanced technology wares, however.

Bill Matthews was there, explaining how his Laguna Hills-based company’s product could improve productivity and reduced costs.

Industrial Tricycles

“Wages are so high you can’t have a man walk from one end of a plant to another with a piece of paper,” Matthews said. “It will cost you $15. Give him a bike,” he continued, showing off the three-speed tricycle model his company makes and increasingly sells to industries for use at sprawling plant sites.

The Bill Matthews Co. began selling trikes to industry about four years ago and sales are increasing every year, he said. Before that, the company’s trikes were sold primarily to “little old ladies,” Matthews said.

Whether it is achieved by using fiber optics or tricycles, Spector’s gospel is that more attention to maintenance and thus product quality and less preoccupation with the bottom line will make American industry more competitive.