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Silence is not necessarily golden in the facility management and manufacturing world. In some cases, it implies that there is an issue that is brewing in the unnoticed asset, which is important.
Take an example of a conveyor belt that vibrates a little too late or an HVAC machine that loses its effectiveness gradually. And when you do not realize that it is taking place, then you cannot repair it. This time of not knowing is where destruction of your equipment as well as your bottom line is likely to happen.
That is where Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) enters the picture. The watchdog metric is what gauges the alertness of your maintenance team. Here, we shall subdivide the definition of MTTD, the differences between it and other measures of reliability such as MTTR, and how you can use contemporary tools like Cryotos CMMS to identify problems before they turn into costly failures.
Mean Time to detect or Mean time to discover (Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)) is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) of maintenance and asset management.
It is the mean second it takes the time between the initiation of a failure (bearing freezing, leakage, voltage drop) and the time at which your technicians, operators, or monitoring sensors are notified of its happening.
MTTD is considered a "first domino" metric. The speed of detection dictates the speed of the entire repair process.
The MTTD formula is very simple. You add all the time that was spent in detecting failures within a particular period and divide the sum with the incidences.
Formula: MTTD = Sum of Incident Detection Times/ Number of Incidents
Example: In case your facility has 10 equipment failures within one month and the total amount of time on each failure is 30 hours here your calculation would be:
This is an average of 3 hours that your equipment is running in a failed or degraded condition before anybody notices.
To control the reliability of assets, you should consider these measurements as an asset breakdown schedule. They narrate about an asset lifecycle: duration of running, time to realize that something is wrong, and time to repair it.
The following is the breakdown to dispel the confusion:
Note: MTTD can be improved to decrease MTTR. Early detection of loose bolt (Low MTTD) is always a few minutes to repair. It may require days to catch it after it shears off (High MTTD).
The Takeaway: You should have all three. There is a false sense of safety over a machine that is highly reliable (High MTBF) and slow to detect (High MTTD). And when it does fail, it can cost you thousands of dollars to realize it.
A slow MTTD is considered a silent killer in the operation of facilities. This delay is not only costly in terms of operation, but it also affects the whole business.
There is a linear correlation between the financial loss and the detection time. In the manufacturing industry, downtime expenses may cost thousands of tens of dollars in an hour. Assuming MTTD of 4 hours, that is, 4 hours in which a machine may be running at half-speed, resulting in unnecessary energy use, or making scrap material before the repair process has even commenced.
When you are only depending on machine operators to report the problem, then your MTTD is necessarily beyond the required level. Internal damage is frequently serious when an operator hears an odd noise or vibration. Using manual reporting will ensure that you are never responding to the issues but preventing them.
Operation equipment under failed condition increases wear and tears. Even a slight misalignment, which may go unnoticed in a matter of weeks, can ruin a gearbox. This is causing you to write down costly assets many years ahead of schedule, which is increasing your capital expenditure (CapEx).
To decrease MTTD, the change will be made between reactive waiting and proactive monitoring. The following are some of the major measures of sharpening your detection skills:
The major cause of high MTTD is blind spots. Even when no one is present; you have to make sure that your critical assets are under watch. Move away from "run-to-failure." Real-time assets health is monitored using CBM techniques. This will make sure that a decrease in pressure or a burst in temperature will sound like an alarm immediately.
The final tool towards reducing the MTTD is IoT sensors. These are low-cost gadgets that can be attached to the motors, pumps, and panels to monitor the vibration, temperature, and noise.
It is sometimes a human eye that makes the best sensor, however, assuming that the data must be taken in real time. Don't use paper checklists, use mobile apps. Once an operator identifies a leakage during a daily round, he/she should be in a position to take a picture and share it immediately. This gets rid of the days of delays of paper forms just sitting on a desk.
When a big breakdown occurred, I request: Why did it take us so long to realize this? Was the sensor not calibrated properly? Was the operator negligent of the warning light? The first step towards bridging the gap is the identification of the detection gap.
To maintenance teams, more robust data and communication is the key to the fight against high MTTD. It is at this point that Cryotos CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) will change your operations.
Cryotos is designed to bridge the gap between failure and detection through intelligent automation:
Cryotos will save you money and time by preventing errors by the fact that you can replace your manual logbooks with automated ones and spot the mistakes when they are simple solutions to a problem.
Asset reliability is the key in a competitive industry. Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) is not just a figure, but it is evidence of the responsiveness and cognizance of your maintenance crew. Reduced MTTD will result in reduced downtime, reduced costs of repairs, and a safer facility.
In knowing the distinction between MTTD, MTTR, and MTBF, and using intelligent methods of monitoring, you can stop the fires and begin preventing them.
Ready to eliminate blind spots in your maintenance operations? See how Cryotos CMMS can help you detect issues instantly and keep your facility running smoothly.
