Case Study: IR and MCA Inspections Prevent Asset Failure

The Need:

The Snell Group provides scheduled quarterly infrared inspections and motor circuit testing for Cargill’s oil seed plant in Des Moines, Iowa.   Prior to hiring The Snell Group, Cargill’s insurance company provided infrared inspections. According to Scot Larson, Maintenance & Reliability Leader, those inspections were hit or miss. They weren’t frequent enough, and the inspectors did not produce recommendations that could be acted on to improve asset health. Scot knew more frequent and higher quality inspections were needed to prevent asset failure or even a plant outage.

The Solution:

Through quarterly inspections, analysis and reporting, The Snell Group identifies issues with electrical and motor assets and provides specific recommendations for repair or further analysis. According to Scot Larson, “We need to have a good understanding of the health of our equipment in order to prevent plant outages and failures. The Snell Group’s infrared and motor circuit analysis technicians not only find issues that could cause failures, but they give us sound recommendations on how to repair them and reduce the likelihood of inducing the same defect in the future. The Snell Group technicians also understand how infrared and motor circuit analysis fit into a comprehensive condition monitoring program, and they work as an effective team with technicians using other technologies, such as vibration testing.”

The Results:

As a result of The Snell Group’s services, this plant has achieved 100% electrical asset health and 99.5% motor asset health. “This plant is on the older side,” said Larson “and these services have without a doubt reduced our risk for electrical outages. For motor assets, The Snell Group has found wiring and other issues that would have caused what we used to think were random failures that required unscheduled repairs.   Now we fix them before they happen. The Snell Group is very knowledgeable and professional. We have been very pleased with their services.”