Cost savings through digital hydraulics service

The Cytro­Con­nect Solu­tions ser­vice offer­ing from Bosch Rexroth helps recy­cling com­pa­nies avoid high down­time costs or even con­trac­tu­al penal­ties. The cus­tomized pack­ages of real-time mon­i­tor­ing, data-based analy­ses, and com­ple­men­tary spare parts man­age­ment main­tain the avail­abil­i­ty of hydraulic equip­ment such as scrap shears, shred­ders, and press­es. At the same time, the intel­li­gent com­bi­na­tion of cut­ting-edge IoT tech­nol­o­gy and hydraulics exper­tise min­i­mizes main­te­nance and extends machine life.

The reuse of raw mate­ri­als is a per­ma­nent fix­ture in the econ­o­my. As part of the sup­ply chain, how­ev­er, it also leads to high dead­line pres­sure and, not least, requires seam­less avail­abil­i­ty of shred­ders, scrap shears and presses.

If hydrauli­cal­ly dri­ven recy­cling machines such as shred­ders, scrap shears or press­es fail, there is a threat of con­trac­tu­al penal­ties. If trucks, trains or ships have to wait for the load, the con­se­quen­tial costs quick­ly climb into five to six fig­ures. Acute short­ages of skilled work­ers and the simul­ta­ne­ous super­vi­sion of dis­trib­uted sites cause unnec­es­sary delays in main­te­nance. In addi­tion, recy­cling com­pa­nies lose ser­vice life, mate­r­i­al and bud­get if they replace hydraulic parts on a fixed cycle as a pre­cau­tion. Bosch Rexroth coun­ter­acts all these eco­nom­ic dis­ad­van­tages and finan­cial risks with the three ser­vice pack­ages Cytro­Con­nect Mon­i­tor, Main­tain and Predict.

Flat rate against failures at a fixed monthly price

Plant oper­a­tors achieve the high­est pos­si­ble avail­abil­i­ty and ser­vice life of com­po­nents with Cytro­Con­nect Pre­dict. Using pre­dic­tive analy­ses and detailed sta­tus reports, the experts make main­te­nance rec­om­men­da­tions at such an ear­ly stage that the affect­ed com­po­nents can be replaced in a planned man­ner. This reduces the user’s pre­vi­ous main­te­nance effort by up to 50 per­cent. Com­ple­men­tary ser­vices such as com­plete spare parts man­age­ment with guar­an­teed deliv­ery with­in 24 hours fur­ther opti­mize avail­abil­i­ty. The ser­vice fees usu­al­ly pay for them­selves with­in a year, but depend­ing on the appli­ca­tion, they can also be recouped with a sin­gle avoid­ed down­time, as the fol­low­ing real-life exam­ple shows:

Through pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics and pre­dic­tive main­te­nance of scrap shears, an inter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny with over 100 dis­trib­uted yards can avoid high down­time costs. Pre­vi­ous down­time costs per case were around 600 euros, plus penal­ties of up to 100,000 euros per day if shiploads of steel bales did not leave for over­seas on time. Wear on the shear is detect­ed at an ear­ly stage on the basis of the pres­sure peaks and torques on the elec­tric motors, so that the oper­a­tor can replace the tool in a planned man­ner in the future. The far-flung main­te­nance staff is sus­tain­ably relieved and now needs less time for trou­bleshoot­ing, main­te­nance, plan­ning and spare parts pro­cure­ment. In addi­tion, mon­i­tor­ing saves elec­tric­i­ty costs because the sys­tem avoids oper­a­tion with increased ener­gy consumption.

In anoth­er use case, a recy­cling com­pa­ny avoids unplanned shut­downs and sub­se­quent costs through pre­dic­tive analy­sis of waste shred­ders. The shred­ded waste has since been deliv­ered on time again as fuel to a cement plant. Pre­vi­ous­ly, fre­quent fail­ures of hydraulic pumps and elec­tric motors result­ed in reg­u­lar penal­ties and addi­tion­al costs for tem­po­rary stor­age of the deliv­ered waste. The main­te­nance depart­ment, which was suf­fer­ing from a short­age of skilled work­ers, was relieved of this bur­den in the long term.

In addi­tion to the all-inclu­sive Cytro­Con­nect Pre­dict ser­vice, Bosch Rexroth also offers the basic Cytro­Con­nect Mon­i­tor pack­age, which pro­vides pure real-time mon­i­tor­ing with access to his­tor­i­cal data from the last 24 hours. As an intro­duc­tion to the top­ic of rule- and data-based analy­ses, Bosch Rexroth rec­om­mends the Cytro­Con­nect Main­tain pack­age. The ser­vice pack­age mon­i­tors the con­di­tion of com­po­nents in the back­ground using pre­de­fined rules, warns of dam­age via push mes­sages, and sup­ports the con­tin­u­ous opti­miza­tion of appli­ca­tions with reg­u­lar per­for­mance and usage reports.

All three ser­vice pack­ages already include the respec­tive required dash­boards and sen­sors. Recy­cling com­pa­nies ben­e­fit quick­ly and eas­i­ly from intel­li­gent and sus­tain­able fail­ure protection.