Interview with M.J.Maillis S.A.
Interview with UPTIME project partner Vasilis Boursinos, General Manager of M.J.Maillis S.A. Industrial Packaging Systems and Technologies, who is based in Athens. He shared his views with us on the benefits of predictive maintenance for MAILLIS’ cold rolling, which produces steel strapping. With UPTIME having entered the evaluation phase, MAILLIS can reflect upon the results already achieved, the challenges that need to be overcome and how these results, upon successful evaluation, can become part of the MAILLIS Modus Operandi.
MAILLIS‘s offer combines high-quality packaging materials and state‐of‐the‐art technology, ensuring that metal producers enjoy reliable, durable, proven and high‐speed strapping and wrapping technology at the optimal cost. MAILLIS uses cold rolling mills to produce rolling products with the smallest possible thickness tolerances and an excellent surface finish. Given an entry steel coil of 4 tons weight, 233 mm width and 2 mm thickness, MAILLIS produces steel straps over the whole thickness spectrum down to 0.4 mm.
How has MAILLIS performed maintenance activities so far?
Cold rolling is actually a process through which the steel band’s cross sectional area becomes thin, by imposing hydraulic pressure through 2 sets of counter-rotating steel rolls. Each passage results in a reduction of thickness by approximately 25%. Roller mill maintenance is performed in 4 areas, namely rollers, bearings, drives and auxiliaries. The demand for changing over the milling rollers comes from either their regular wear or from an unexpected damage, which can occur due to either a defective raw material or an equipment malfunction.
When this occurs, rolls are removed from the stand for grinding. This usually happens every eight hours for the work rolls and every week for the backup rolls. The worn rollers go to the workshop for grinding their surface and give back their initial shape. Each time the rolls are removed for grinding some roll diameter is lost. After several regrinding, the diameter of the roll becomes so small that the rolls are no longer useful. Bearing maintenance would include frequent addition of small quantities of grease during operation. Periodical checks and measurements will be performed also to drives and auxiliaries.
How will UPTIME improve your maintenance service performance?
The MAILLIS business case provides a tool for UPTIME to address different aspects of a significant innovation problem, describing users‘ needs, operational problems and underlying challenges. Illustrating innovation implications on a common use case, sharing the same datasets, and utilizing outputs from other teams are all benefits of having an integrated picture of the general problem. It mainly deals with real time monitoring of generated sensor data and some operational variables, recommendations to the personnel, e.g. to proceed with replacement of a mill roller as well as analysis of production of data, which enables tracking of performance of specified KPIs.
At the end of the project, it is expected that MAILLIS will have a machine that reports its current health status along with the appropriate data analytics and metrics. Moreover, UPTIME will allow predictions about equipment‘s future health as well as recommendations for future actions and enable machines performing self-assessment, on which decision-making can be followed to advance equipment maintenance and facilitate the machine components and products life cycle.