Maintenance Mindset: This robotic dog can sit, stay, and collect maintenance data from the plant floor

Welcome to Maintenance Mindset, our editors’ takes on things going on in the worlds of manufacturing and asset management that deserve some extra attention. This will appear regularly in the Member’s Only section of the site.

Maintenance + robotics + BMW = See SpOTTO Run

See spot. See spot run. See spot run highly technical monitoring systems for industrial maintenance.

That’s exactly what BMW Group has started with SpOTTO, its customized version of the famous four-legged, dog-like robot Spot from Boston Dynamics. If you’ve been to any industrial conference in the last few years, you’ve likely seen one walking around among the booths.

SpOTTO is working at the BMW Group Plant Hams Hall in the United Kingdom. Equipped with visual, thermal and acoustic sensors, the robot collects valuable production data for the plant’s digital twin and serves as a watchdog, overseeing facility maintenance.

The maintenance data SpOTTO collects is combined with production and IT data and then fed to the digital twin for analysis on quality assurance or production planning. SpOTTO also performs numerous maintenance tasks, such as monitoring the temperature of manufacturing equipment and identifying leaks in the compressed air lines.

SpOTTO gets its name from Gustav Otto, one of the founders of BMW and son of Nicolaus Otto, the inventor of the four-stroke internal combustion engine. In 2023, the plant made more than 400,000 engines with about 1,600 employees working alongside SpOTTO.

A year-long process tested suitable activities for SpOTTO, and BMW is currently trialing other potential applications, including reading analog operating controls or performing complex sequences of movements to access hard-to reach areas of production.

SpOTTO isn’t the only Boston Dynamic robot working in industry. Woodside, an Australian natural gas producer, is testing the use of Spot to handle a range of inspection tasks across its complex, potentially hazardous sites. The robots will work in areas with high-voltage transformers or as a “first responder” during emergency situations. Spot has six potential applications at Woodside: gauge reading, leak detection, noise anomaly detection, thermal inspection, gas detection and remote inspection, all tasks currently performed by humans looking and logging.

In January 2024, Danish pharmaceutical manufacturer Novo Nordisk launched a pilot program with Boston Dynamics to explore ways to integrate Spot into its manufacturing process. Novo Nordisk’s Spot operates a Fluke SV600 acoustic sensor to identify air leaks, or the distinct sound waves generated when air escapes under pressure. In total, Spot was programmed to conduct approximately 300 inspections.

Chevron has also been working with Spot at a cogeneration facility at the Chevron Pipeline and Power Upstream facility in Bakersfield, California, as well as refineries in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and El Segundo, California. In the summer of 2023, Chevron signed a strategic agreement with Boston Dynamics to scale the use of Spot at other locations.

At the Bakersfield facility, Spot takes visual and thermal images for inspection data, and Spot’s lidar scans collect long-term historical data for Chevron. The data collection process is more standardized and less error prone, and Spot runs automated routes day and night. Spot also traverses the electrical switch yard, which requires detailed safety procedures for people.

The robotics teams working with Spot underwent testing for a long time before they let the robot loose on the shop floor. Several companies talked about the culture change and communication (and safety measures) that were needed to make employees feel comfortable working with Spot. There were many lessons learned in programming routes, and the teams emphasized the colossal time and effort involved in programming and integrating robots into a dynamic production floor. It’s no plug-and-play.

However, the production rewards for these companies seem worth the efforts so far. In a world where most factories are short on human workers, the fear of robots taking over jobs has been replaced with the fear of no workers at all, at least for skills-strapped manufacturing.

My advice: just in case, be sure to be nice to Spot. Maybe a treat or a game of fetch? Please and thank you go a long way. In the event that artificial intelligence does realize we are the weak link, it couldn’t hurt to befriend our future AI overlords. And until then, a four-legged robot that can climb stairs might just be a great addition to your maintenance team.

– Anna Townshend

New study: downtime incidents are down, but the cost of those incidents is rising

Here's the good news: according to a new research report by MaintainX, the number of unplanned downtime incidents across industry dropped last year.

Chris Turlica, CEO and Co-Founder of MaintainX, commented that "the decline in the frequency of unplanned downtime highlights that facilities across industries are making positive progress toward improving maintenance, asset reliability, and operational processes."

However, there's always bad news too, and in this case it's that the cost of these disruptions is higher than ever. The report found that the average cost of unplanned downtime currently hovers at $25,000 per hour, with larger organizations clocking in at $500,000 or more.

The report was released in mid-August, and raises a question that I think all plants should be asking themselves: is the decrease in downtime incidents at your plant enough to offset the growing cost per incident? And if not, what is the path forward to help stabilize these costs?

The report does not answer this question head-on. Rather it showcases a number of industry case studies where each plant team identified the downtime challenges at their specific facility. Some examples include:

• Christopher Wilcox, maintenance manager at Univar Solutions: “"Maintenance data is the secret weapon. … It’s the objective evidence you need to build a compelling case for resources and investments in your program. And when you present empirical, data-driven insights, you gain credibility and trust from decision-makers."
• Justin Foat, fleet maintenance manager at Herlache Truck Lines: “Everything’s gotten kore expensive and longer to procure. Inflation has significantly increased the cost of parts and raw goods. … We’ve had to be much more conservative when it comes to keeping critical parts in stock.”
• Jeremiah Dotson, maintenance and facility manager at Amfab Steel: “You won’t always have the luxury of being able to replace aging equipment, so you have to control what you can. By taking the time to teach technicians about the machines and walk them through the documentation on file, we can ensure that all team members have the necessary knowledge to deal with and fix failures.”

The full report is free to download and is well worth the read, and should help you and your teams identify the unique downtime challenges at your own facilities.

– Thomas Wilk