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Screening monitoring returns 44 million for Carajás Plant

July 13, 2022

Monitoring vibrating screens is a challenge. The Falha Zero Group’s automatic vibration detection project at the Carajás Plant won two awards for continuous improvement in maintenance due to Vale’s investment in wireless sensors and remote equipment monitoring at the Serra Norte I and II Plants.

Check it out in this success story, the action of DynaLoggers in the remote monitoring of vibrating screens and the impact of the of the change in elaboration and management , connected to the pillars of Industry 4.0.

Identifying the problem

After a careful analysis of the risks of maintenance activities, especially in the inspections and data collection of the plant’s equipment, it became clear that there was a need to invest in a technology that could perform the collection process remotely, reducing the inspectors’ exposure to the risks of data collection performed manually.

Highlighted in the WRA – Work Risk Analysis, it was evident that the activities had a high and medium level for the inspectors who collected vibration, which is the most common activity performed on a daily basis.

Thereby, it was defined that the root cause of the problems was the exposure to accidents with the predictive team, which consequently impaired the monitoring of critical equipment for the plant’s production.

The use of the Solution

Aiming at improving the processes through remote monitoring technology, wireless vibration and temperature sensors were installed in 71 screens, which are critical pieces of equipment and needed more periodic measurements.

The collected data from the vibrating screens via gateway were directly sent to the cloud, optimized both the form of vibration collection and the analysis of anomalies detected in the equipment, signaling the level of criticality for decision making.

Results achieved after implementation

With the installation of Dynamox sensors and gateways, there were significant gains in collection time reduction, increased issuance of reports, as well as, 616 hours of corrections avoided and a potential gain of $44 million (the investment represented less than 0.16% of the potential gain, in less than 3 months of use).

Therefore, the possibility of analysis in full time eliminated the need for technicians to travel to the screen or any other equipment, avoiding waste of time, movement, and rework.

Thus, the project represents two of the most important pillars of Industry 4.0: innovation in the service of safety!

To Olavo Duarte, Predictive Maintenance Supervisor at Vale and responsible for idealizing the project, “Dynamox’s technology allows us to manage the health of our assets, bringing benefits that go beyond monitoring.

Among them: differentiated technical support, data/information security, gains in productivity, and reduction in the predictive inspection teams’ exposure.

In the Carajás plants, we are already reaping the benefits and generating potential gains that correspond to less than 0.6% of the investment in the project with screens”, he highlighted.

This is another successful project from the partnership between Vale and Dynamox that demonstrates the commitment to two foundations of industrial maintenance: people and assets!