Ever had one of those ‘told you so’ moments? 12 years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was working in the development and promotion of a new technology to help engineers align rotating machinery, pumps, fans, gear-boxes and other oily stuff. Traditionally this has been done with rules and feeler gauges and maybe a clock indicator and the back of a fag packet, or some guy standing back, cocking his head, wiping his oily rag across his forehead and saying ‘That’ll do’er, Jim’. Now you probably think this is non- too exciting field and a bit of a conversation stopper. Never seemed to work for me on the dance floor I can tell you. You may think that, until you start to dig a bit and do the numbers. Why is this important? Well, the main reason a rotating a machinery breaks down is because it is out of alignment the bits inside like bearing, seals. couplings etc wear prematurely and have to be repalced. If these are unpredicted breakdown then this really gets expensive. Plants get shut down and don’t produce product, which CEO’s and shareholders don’t like. It’s a major headache. To correctly align a machine, with the old techniques can take a full day, if you do it properly and so so it stays in the right alignment. So here are two problems, they have to do it accurately and they have to speed up the process and the market would like a solution.
Is this a big enough problem for a enough people to make it a viable business? Is the Pope a Catholic? This is where the numbers get bit bewilderingly large. The first number to think is about just how big is the market size. Is it worth bothering about? How many places do you actually find a pump or a fan or a compressor. Trust me, not this is not just a few , just as a starter actually 4.5million pumps where installed in 1990 just in the EU countries as they were then. And these aren’t little pumps either such as those that you may use for your jacussi or hot tub or goldfish pond, and be powered by a solar cell the size of a Blockbuster card. No, these are the big process pumps. In fact do me a favour and stop reading, well in a second and take a look around you, OK you can come back now. Everything you see pretty much has involved a machinery to process it, or transport that to you at some point in its life. That is every mine, oil refinery, every factory, train, boat, plane, AC equipped office and some rotating machinery that has an impact on your life. Anyway, you get my point, there are a heck of a lot. If misalignment or as it is known in the trade correctly or poor shaft alignment, is the root cause of the vast majority of machinery breakdowns, then that is an awful lot of spare parts, engineering travel, downtime that it cost. In fact more illustrious personages than me have calulated that it costs the US economy literally Billions of dollars a year. OK, I think we coudl all agree that there may be a case to answer here and , indeed the laser (read diode) based devices we helped develop are now in use in a lot of plants and engineering shops, in Europe and North America, although hardly any are use in Asia or the Middle East. YOU coudl say teh reaosn for this what that it was, at that time, a realtively costly piece of kit, just because so few where actually being bought Just out of interest they sold at about $10,000 and you can buy an awful lot of spanners for 10k. It just wasn't taken up and converted into numbers we thought it might be. LOyt of reaosn for that but there are a lot of reasons why some people don’t want things to work better. Like maintennce and servie companies seal and bearing manufacturers whom surprisingly make theri money from replacing worn out bits.
YOu take thse things on the chin. But then we come to the ‘told you so’ bit and that which has been the thorn that’s under my skin since the beginning.
If you correctly align a pump you reduce all the points of friction between the rotating and non rotating components. It takes less power, or electricity to turn it. Obviuos eh? Measuring the pre alignment current draw of a motor and post precision alignment, which actually takes a quarter of the time as all the traditional trial and error methods, is taken out of the equation, we could reduce conservatively reduce e power consumption by 2%. In some cases cooling tower fans I remember being - worst case we came across, to the reduction in energy consumption could be as much as 18%. Now the weird pre Kyoto Kuwait thing is that we happily won awards all over the place for its for innovative design- this was produced by a a Swedish company and it was hot, if I do say so myself. It was like nothing else in the market place, used to hammers and wrenches and bigger hammers for the precision jobs. We were using touch screens and icons way before Steve Jobs and got around to it on his I-phone. We won those awards for its design not for its contribution to all things Green.
What used to both amaze and amuse me was that wherever we went to show off our toy there would invariably be lots of stickers around the offices reminding us with jolly cartoons of light bulbs blinking photocopyers with smiley faces to switch of power .Those snappy one liners imploring us to ‘Turn me off and save a tree’. Or something equally pithy. These where in the very same factory using any number of these electric motors, for any one of which would be the equivalent for paying paying the electricity bill of a small hamlet. A 60Kw motor is a baby. If, my maths is correct, that’s 1000 light bulbs running 24 hours a day 365 days year. For one pump. I’ve been in a petrochemical operation in the UK which has 1200, 200 KW motors just in one plant. That plant has one shaft alignment kit and nobody was trained to use it. In fact alignment is hardly taught at all as a basic fundamental engineering skill in any academic institution. The general acceptance of the problem, has I think for all those concerned been a bit disappointing.
As Spike Milligan’s Epitaph on his headstone says, ‘I told you I was ill’ I know what he means.
This was, and still is an innovative approach to an old problem but maybe was ahead of its time, or required modification or priced to high and too small an aspirin for too small problem. Personally I think, without trying to sound patronising, was that it required education of the market as to what the problem and the solution was all about and what it actually meant to their bottom line. It was something engineers just lived with, machines break down, so what. Innovation is all about timing. A month too late, a year early. So, look back, keep looking back at opportunities that died, maybe now is the time to open them up again or at least take a peak.
Laser shaft alignments systems are ten years on, a pretty common tool, they haven’t changed that much in that time, same players are making the same old same old. The price has dropped a bit, but there are still very few players in the market. But no where near as well adopted as part of best prcatice or any indicators of benchmarking s would gauge. There are hardly any are used at all in the Middle East or Asia. But even in North America and Europe there are still plant managers who bitch at the price, now about $5000. It reminds me of the story of the shoe salesmen sent to a Pacific island who faxes back to Head Office, ‘Bring me back, they don’t wear shoes’. So they send another salesman out who faxes back, ‘send me all your stock, they don’t wear shoes’.
Innovation isn’t just about coming up with a really neat idea, its about having the right story to tell and the right time to tell it. And you may have only a short time to tell it. Now with the looming energy crises, emission restrictions and post Kyoto a fallout Thanks s Mr Gore up there is a new story to tell that may ring a few bells, claxons, alarms – and the laser shaft alignment system is reborn as the Laser Energy Conservation Tool.
By the way, If anyone out there wants to know how they can get into this, what the market should be doing and making now or anything about shaft alignment drop me a line. I’ve still got the book I wrote about it 10 years ago somewhere in my drawers. I was very, very sad , once.
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