Proactive maintenance is a norm in many industrial operations, including in recycling plants. But even with a program of preventive maintenance in place, it’s easy to miss small leaks through a loose fastener or fretting corrosions in bearings and other cylindrical parts.
To help the maintenance and repair teams keep a closer watch on the potential areas of imminent failure and to drive more cost effectiveness from the equipment, Henkel Australia provides in-plant surveys and training workshops in partnership with their national distribution partner, BSC.
Michael Rowe, BSC Product Manager, explains what the workshops aim to deliver.
“Henkel’s in-plant surveys and training workshops, which the BSC team helps to organise for our customers, are aimed at improving reliability at the respective industrial facilities. The program is often customised and tailored to focus on issues that the maintenance, repair and operation (MRO) teams at the facility deal with more intensely to drive cost-savings where possible,” he explains.
“For example, as part of the training workshops, we might talk about how and why gaskets fail, why the threaded seals leak, what causes bearings to slip in the shafts or housings, and more importantly, how these can be prevented by using the right products from the Henkel LOCTITE range.”
Henkel’s Victoria and Tasmania State Sales Manager, Richard Hoe has been with the company for nearly 10 years and delivered hundreds of MRO workshops to end users in different industries.
Richard explains the workshops are often sub divided into two parts.
“First, we conduct a plant survey to identify the specific applications that the particular facility has. We then tailor our training session to focus on the particular solutions that could help the maintenance team achieve more efficiency and reduce downtime by using the range of solutions that Henkel’s LOCTITE adhesives have to offer.”
Michael says the LOCTITE maintenance workshops can be arranged upon request for any customer seeking to learn more about the solutions.
“Any customer can reach out to a BSC representative and we are more than happy to work with the Henkel engineering team to help them add value in their respective operations,” he says.
The LOCTITE industrial adhesive range includes a number of anaerobic adhesive solutions that are ideal for preventive maintenance in a workshop scenario, Richard says.
These solutions are subdivided into four core categories: Thread locking, thread sealing, liquid gasket solutions and retaining.
In a recent LOCTITE maintenance workshop, Richard says the LOCTITE engineering team noticed that a customer was using PTFE tapes to seal pipe threads, which was not doing the job efficiently.
“By introducing the LOCTITE thread sealants to the customer, we were able to resolve the leakage problem. The solution was implemented over the weekend and the production line was back in operation by Monday,” Richard says.
According to Richard, while the LOCTITE anaerobic adhesives have become synonymous with high performance and reliability, the brand is consistently improving.
“A lot of LOCTITE’s core products are now available without a need for a primer or activator. This means you can use these products on inactive metals and still have a guarantee that they’ll attain full cure within 24 hours,” he explains
Starting this year, the LOCTITE anaerobic adhesives products are also available in new and improved packaging bottles that help reduce the risk of counterfeit products being purchased.
In another move that helps end users deliver on their own waste reduction targets, Henkel has partnered with TerraCycle, a global leader in recycling hard-to-recycle materials, to provide a package recycling solution for its anaerobic adhesive range.
BSC has a long-standing partnership with Henkel, with the company distributing Henkel’s LOCTITE product range in Australia for the past 40 years.
Michael says maintenance workshops and training programs have been part of the two team’s offerings from the beginning of this partnership to help expand their customer’s knowledge around the available adhesive solutions.
“BSC and Henkel share a synergy in that we both go to great lengths to support our customers. Even these days with the limitations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the BSC and LOCTITE team continue to engage with customers through webinars, online meetings and training videos,” he concludes.
