Eriks has been appointed by SKF as the company's first certified maintenance partner (CMP) with full UK national coverage, following three year's work as a local CMP. The ‘national' status recognises Eriks' UK footprint in terms of technical support.
Ericks employs 32 certified vibration analysts in the field, working from over 70 branch locations and 23 workshop locations nationwide. This demonstrates the breadth and depth of coverage around the country, putting the service within easy reach of the largest possible number of customers.
The SKF certified maintenance partner (CMP) program was developed to provide a tailored condition monitoring service for bearings on critical machinery, recognising the ability to effectively monitor bearing condition also provides a good indicator of the wider machine condition. Analysis of bearing vibration can highlight and help to pinpoint any number of problems on a machine that can impact on performance and reliability. It can also flag up potential points of failure, allowing planned downtime and maintenance rather than costly reactive measures.
SKF's specialist monitoring equipment and analysis software allows accurate interpretation of vibration signals, and provides comprehensive recommendations as to any measures that should be taken. A key benefit of the CMP service is to make this high-level analysis available to SME customers who wouldn't otherwise have access to the technology.
Eriks delivers the CMP program as part of its broader technical services offering, providing consultancy, supply, installation and commissioning of products, systems and processes.
The process typically starts with a consultation, not just covering the bearings or machine in question, but looking at the wider context of what the machine does and where it fits into the process. Using critical path analysis and a benchmarking of performance parameters and risk levels, a preventative maintenance strategy can be developed alongside the physical analysis work to make sure the application of any retroactive work, repairs or replacement schedule is successful in the long-term. Using this review process, identifies existing high-risk, performance-critical areas and can be used to prioritise savings or improvement opportunities.
Customers receive a set of recommendations, highlighting opportunities where condition monitoring and analysis could help to reduce downtime, reduce energy and improve reliability, or where Eriks solutions could increase performance. All of these recommendations will drive cost savings through reduced maintenance or process improvement.
The measures are prioritised into short and medium-term categories for implementation. This becomes the basis for an agreed action plan, incorporating schedules, milestones and completion dates, with Eriks multi-disciplined engineers working alongside customers' own engineering teams to install and commission the required solutions.