Author Archives: Carlos De Sordi

Caterpillar to Sell Purpose-Built Forestry Business

Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) has announced it will sell its purpose-built forestry business to Iowa-based Weiler Inc., with the deal expected to close in early 2019.

According to reports, the agreement includes all assets of CAT’s purpose-built forestry line, including its manufacturing plant and warehouse in Georgia, training center in Alabama and distribution center in North Carolina. The line of equipment includes machines like wheel skidders, track feller bunchers, wheel feller bunchers and other equipment. Other CAT equipment, including log loading and forestry excavators, will remain with the brand.

CAT is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of off-highway and industrial equipment. They employee just over 98 thousand people worldwide.

Simple Steps Can Help Reduce the Cost of Downtime

Unplanned downtime due to equipment failure is a costly, yet preventable, part of any industry that can sometimes be overlooked.

In industrial applications that rely on a lot of complex equipment operating under extreme conditions, it isn’t uncommon to see breakdowns happen. Some downtime is necessary for things like maintenance and scheduled repairs, but when it happens unexpectedly it can cause major problems. An average company in the manufacturing industry will see as much as 800 hours of downtime each year. This can result in thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars lost. For automotive manufacturers, who on average lose between $22k and $50k per minute of downtime, the cost can soar into the millions.

Costs from downtime come in two forms, tangible and intangible. Tangible costs are usually easy to find and examine. The loss of production capacity of a piece of equipment being down, the cost of labor for an idle worker and the cost of repairing broken equipment are all examples. The intangible costs are more difficult to find. Downtime can cause responsiveness and customer satisfaction to slip. It can put stress on employees and equipment, leading to a vicious cycle of downtime.

But how can downtime be prevented? There are steps that any manufacturer can take to minimize lost hours and lost profit.

Keep a routine maintenance schedule – It can be a challenge to stay on top of maintenance in a huge plant filled with technically advanced equipment. That is why sticking to a tight, routine maintenance schedule with a consistent reporting process. That way you can see a potential breakdown coming days or weeks in advance while also identifying troubling trends with your equipment.

Have a plan in place – Sometimes, it just isn’t enough just to respond to problems as they come. It is critical to create an action plan for different breakdown scenarios and train employees on those plans. In the short term, you may only reduce downtime by a couple of minutes, but those minutes can add up. This is especially true when it comes to those intangible costs. Some events may come out of left field entirely, but it is still important to plan for whatever you can.

Be ready to adapt – Having an employee or a team sitting idle (or sitting idle yourself) because of a breakdown isn’t exactly efficient. If you can’t help directly with getting back online, make sure you and your team are cross trained and ready to jump on something else. You may be able to make up some of the loss helping out someone who is behind on other projects.

Prepare messaging – Make sure you have messaging ready to go in the event of downtime. Be ready to contact whoever needs to fix the problem immediately and ensure they understand the gravity of the situation. Next, reach out to employees to let them know what is happening via internal contact lists. Finally, reach out to customers and clients, let them know there is a problem, that it’s being taken care of and provide a timetable if possible.

While it is almost impossible to prevent all downtime, especially when factoring downtime that has been planned, these steps can help keep it to a minimum.

BP to Consider Selling $6 Billion in Assets

After it’s acquisition of BHP Billiton’s oil and natural gas assets in July, oil giant BP PLC is considering selling some of its wells in the United States.

According to Reuters, BP, based in England, purchased the assets of Australia’s BHP Billiton for $10.5 Billion in July. Reports indicated BP could unload up to $6 billion in assets from its fields in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Wyoming. The organization wants to focus more on assets with higher returns and buy back some of its stock.

The acquisition was the company’s biggest since 1999, when they purchased Atlantic Richfield Co.

Mines in Mexico, Australia Set to Re-Open

Two well known mines are set to re-open after long periods of inactivity.

In Mexico, the San Martin Mine, located in the northern state of Zacatecas, will resume operation after an 11-year worker strike. The mine is believed to hold as much as 17 million tons of zinc, silver, lead, copper and gold. According to a statement by mine owners Grupo Mexico, the mine will require an investment of about $77 million to get up and running after the long layoff.

In Australia, the government has begun its search for a company to re-open the Ellendale Diamond Mine, which has been dormant since 2015.

The mine was previously operated by Kimberly Diamond Company before ending up in government control. It was the main supplier of yellow diamonds to Tiffany & Co. and was responsible for about half of the world’s supply of the rare stones.

According to statements by government officials, a decision on a new operator is expected early in 2019.

New Association to Advocate for Vehicle Data Laws

A group of fleet associations and telematics providers have partnered with Enterprise Holdings to create a new organization focused on clarifying ownership of and access to vehicle data.

The Global Alliance for Vehicle Data Access (GAVDA) was officially formed on August 20 in Washington, D.C. According to the group’s website, its goal is to protect owner access to vehicle data in an effort to promote security and personal privacy. The group cites a current lack of standards or regulations as a potential issue as vehicle computer systems become more and more complex.

The group consists of several trade associations, including the American Car Rental Association, the National Association of Fleet Administrators (NAFA) and the Car Sharing Association (CSA).

A Quick Guide to Reading your Oil Analysis Report

Oil analysis can go a long way towards extending the life of your lubricant and equipment. Because it is such a valuable tool, understanding how to read your oil analysis report is critical.

An oil analysis report contains a lot of data that can tell you a lot about your equipment, lubricant and processes. Each of the items detected can help you determine what contaminants have infiltrated your system.

“Dirt, antifreeze, fuel, soot and water, those are the primary contaminants that we see,” Mike Wyant, Director of Technical Services for PetroChoice, said.

While some of those contaminants will show up on the report directly, others will need to be determined by reading a little deeper. The report will contain a section on wear metals by weight in parts, per million, as well as readings for additive metals and physical and chemical data. For reference, let’s look at a sample report from PetroChoice’s Engine Guard program:

According to Wyant, this report would indicate dirt contamination, as the levels of silica are elevated beyond a reasonable threshold. You could also determine the sample in question is not contaminated with antifreeze, as sodium and potassium are at normal levels and tests for ethylene glycol came back negative. Usually, a report will suggest corrective action to help mitigate the level of contamination. While all the categories are important, Wyant recommended focusing on the wear metal readings first.

“Wear metals will probably end up being the most critical,” he said. “Confirm the report pertains to your equipment, then look for excess metals and contaminants.”

While understanding the level of contaminants in your sample is important, being able to take action based on the results you receive is what makes oil analysis so important. Different metals or other contaminants found in a sample can point to an equipment problem.

“Dirt is probably the most common,” Wyant said. “It usually indicates a bad air filter or no air filter. Water is probably next most common, usually the result of a bad seal or open fill cap.”

Of course, no two samples are going to be identical. Different additive packages can cause some lubricants to have higher concentration of some materials than others. Some pieces of equipment wear down faster than others and some contaminants are unavoidable in certain applications. This makes consistent testing important, as it will allow you to recognize trends in your samples and act preemptively.

Employment Situation Report Shows Gains in Manufacturing, Construction Jobs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS’s) July Employment Situation Report showed large hiring gains in both the construction and manufacturing industries.

The manufacturing industry added 37,000 jobs in July bringing its 12-month total to 327,000, according to the report. Construction also saw an increase, with 19,000 jobs added last month. Other similar industries, like mining and transportation, saw little to no change. You can read the full report here.

Gains in construction and manufacturing have driven a decrease in the unemployment rate, down 0.1 percent to 3.9 percent for the month. This comes two months after employment had dropped to 3.8 percent, the lowest it had been since April of 2000.

IIHS Report Claims Fatal Uber Accident was Preventable

A report by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) said a March accident where a self-driving Uber vehicle killed a pedestrian in Arizona could have been prevented.

According to the report, Uber had disabled the collision avoidance technology in the Volvo XC90’s safety system. This brought criticism from the IIHS, who said they believe having the system active would likely have prevented the crash.

Many autonomous vehicles have human operators in case of emergency, but police said the person behind the wheel of the vehicle at the time was streaming video on her mobile device shortly before the incident.

The incident caused Uber to stop testing its autonomously driven vehicles on public roads.

Controlling Contamination Critical for Keeping Equipment Running

From machine shops to manufacturing plants, passenger cars to commercial trucks and everywhere in between, contamination control is a challenge that must be met in any application where lubricants are needed.

Contaminated lubricants can lead to long term damage to systems, greatly reducing their effective life. For a business, this can mean repairs, equipment replacement and unnecessary down time.

All of these things cost money and time. However, simple steps can be taken to control contamination and keep everything running smoothly.

Causes of Contamination

Before discussing how to keep lubricants clean, its important to understand how they become contaminated. Some of the more common contaminants are:

Particle and Abrasive Contamination – It isn’t uncommon for particles of dust or dirt can get into a lubricant in transit. These often microscopic particles can reduce the life of the lubricant and damage equipment. Once the lubricants are added to equipment, metal shavings, rust particles and other abrasives can lead to even further contamination and damage.

Water – Water can greatly reduce the life of a lubricant and cause damage to equipment. Water in load zones can lead to increased surface to surface contact and water in a lubricant sump can produce sludge. It can also lead to rust. Water can be broken down into three forms: dissolved, emulsified and free/pure. Emulsified water is the most damaging to a system.

Lubricant Mixing or Choosing the Wrong Lubricant – Mixing different types of lubricants together can result in compatibility issues between additives and cause long term damage. Choosing the wrong lubricant is also problematic, as each piece of equipment will require unique properties from a lubricant. It is particularly important to choose the correct viscosity, but having an incorrect additive package can also be a problem.

Keeping a Clean Machine

Now that we have some background about contamination, how do we prevent it? There are a number of ways to do so, ranging from simple procedure changes to complex remediation. Here are a few quick, easy ways to ensure lubricants stay cleaner, longer.

1.Store, transport and handle properly – It might seem simple but following proper storage protocol can go a long way towards preventing contamination. A lot of different particles can get into a lubricant before it even ends up in equipment if it isn’t stored or handled correctly.

2.Understand the standards – The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created a cleanliness standard, ISO4406:2017, to measure particle contamination per millimeter of fluid at three different sizes per milliliter of fluid at 4, 6 and 14 microns respectively. The number will be expressed as x/y/z. Identify what your levels should be and try to keep them below that. Of course, that is impossible to do without…

3.Testing, testing and more testing – You won’t have any idea your system is contaminated unless you test regularly. Oil and lubricant analysis are a necessity to ensure everything is running as it should be. Choose the analysis program that is right for you, establish some sampling guidelines and get started.

4.Look at the whole picture – When trying to determine what is causing contamination, be sure to take all potential problems into account. You may have stored your lubricant properly, chosen the correct product and taken steps to prevent water infiltration, only to find out your lubricant is still contaminated. Be sure to check every part of your equipment. You may have antifreeze or another fluid leaking into your lubricant. You may have excessive water buildup somewhere you didn’t think of. Check everything, and then check it again.

5.Clean and Filter – If you are switching to a new product, make sure to thoroughly clean out equipment. Even trace amounts of a lubricant left over after draining can cause contamination. It is also important to make sure any and all filters are clean so they are removing any particles they should. If possible, filter new lubricants as well.

Shale Industry Could Become Free Cash Flow Positive

The Shale industry in the United States will be free cash flow positive for the first time by the end of 2018, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

According to the report, higher prices combined with operational and technological improvements are the driving factors behind reaching that level. Production of shale gas is increasing, particularly in the Permian Basin restoring investor confidence in the industry. In addition, the increase in revenue allows shale companies to rely less on bank loans to fund their operations.

The IEA did caution that there were some potential roadblocks to this prediction. Pipeline constraints and a lack of available labor and materials in the Permian Basin could slow down production.