Achieving a proactive maintenance culture and increasing plant reliability.

The Challenge

In 2017, Worthington Industries embarked on a maintenance challenge. Their goal was to improve overall plant reliability, and transform their maintenance and reliability division from a reactive culture to a proactive one. It was a visionary look toward the future for the global metals manufacturing company.

The Journey

Following the blueprint of its five-stage Reliability Triangle, with the ultimate goal being to achieve operational excellence and to target 100% machine reliability, Worthington Industries first established and executed a planned maintenance strategy.

But to achieve the next stage, a truly proactive maintenance culture, the company needed an affordable and comprehensive condition-based predictive maintenance solution. That's when Worthington Industries partnered with AssetWatch^®.

With the AssetWatch^® team responsible for installing and maintaining the wireless condition monitoring system, analyzing machine health data, and providing prescriptive maintenance recommendations, Worthington Industries was empowered with the tools, data and insights needed to make better decisions and the time to proactively schedule maintenance before critical machines fail.

Since partnering with AssetWatch^®, Worthington Industries has seen enormous gains from the cultural transformation to proactive maintenance as well as the ongoing financial benefits of saving millions of dollars annually across the 17 plants being monitored by AssetWatch^®.

Once the planned maintenance strategy was operating, we saw improvements — but the next step, proactive maintenance, based on predictive maintenance and condition-based monitoring, would be where significant gains would be realized.

Jeremie Lieb Maintenance Agile Team Lead

Customer Savings

$16M+

Potential lost gross margin saved with Vero

Wireless Sensors Collecting Data

1,800+

Rugged sensors collect high-quality, full spectrum vibration and temperature data

Monitored Facilities

Rapid system deployment enables enterprise scalability

Downtime Risks Resolved

260+

Early insights into machine health prevent unplanned downtime

Healthy Machine Assets

650+

Vero® protects all stationary rotating equipment - motors, pumps, fans, bearings, gearboxes, etc.

Data Points Analyzed

8M+

Vibration and temperature readings analyzed by ML and expert Condition Monitoring Engineers

Condition based monitoring in action

Within weeks of installation, the Delta Plant had its first big win. We detected a potential failure and suggested a replacement of a furnace roll bearing which prevented approximately 48 hours of unplanned downtime and $500k in potential lost gross margin.

10X

ROI

AssetWatch partnered with AWS to provide the scalability and reliability needed to support a serverless architecture. With a robust suite of services tailored for data ingestion, processing, and machine learning, AWS enables AssetWatch to seamlessly scale sensor data and deliver predictive insights to manufacturing companies. AWS infrastructure reduces operational overhead and allows AssetWatch to focus on innovation to drive value to our customers. Additionally, AWS’s strong security framework and global infrastructure ensure the resilience and compliance required to support mission-critical manufacturing operations at scale. This partnership positions AssetWatch to accelerate growth while maintaining the highest levels of performance and reliability.

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Really Great Results

After initially deploying Vero^® at its flagship steel processing facility in Columbus, OH, Worthington Industries expanded the proactive maintenance system across their enterprise. In total, more than 1,800 vibration+temperature sensors are now tracking the health of 650+ critical machine assets at 17 steel processing and pressure cylinder facilities located throughout North America.

Since the first installation, more than eight million full-spectrum vibration and temperature readings have been gathered by Vero^® sensors and delivered to AssetWatch^® for processing and visualization on its cloud-based software platform. Assisted by machine learning, expert Condition Monitoring Engineers (CMEs) have analyzed the data and have issued more than 400 prescriptive maintenance recommendations.

“Worthington Industries is a global leader in its field, but we needed a solution that was outside our purview. We sought out a partner that had specialized expertise.”

Brad Kern, VP, Steel Operations

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