111–120 of 152 posts
This is fantastic and I'm one of those amateur "tribologists" you mention in one of your replies. Have you looked into contracting with the US government, particularly the military? You might think of partnering with a company that's established in that space.
I am curious as to what issues you've encountered in terms of getting people to sign up, is it the outlay required for these companies to switch over, is the migration process from traditional manual paperwork to your system a deterrent? I know the mining industry despite leaning heavily on automation in recent years still has that outback handshake mentality surrounding it.
A thought on pricing: per machine is probably the best. If you do per zerk, customers are going to try and do one zerk on the machine, and track it on a per machine basis, instead of per zerk (which is what you want).
The employees will then learn this, and grease that one spot. The customers won't see the value (since the data will be crappy), and might end up seeing it as a boondoggle instead of the valuable service that it obviously is.
Some other thoughts, and a reason to sell per-machine: early warning systems for parts that are about to fail. If a part is leaking grease, and using up more than it should, warn the customer about it. Could be a gasket going bad, but in any case probably needs maintenance attention.
Good luck!
Are you competing with equipment manufacturers at all? I worked with one big manufacturer briefly, and they were cramming telemetry and electronics into everything they could, so they could provide this kind of cloud-based preventative maintenance service (although i never heard anything specific about grease). Is there a chance you eventually won't be able to sell because machines already come with grease intelligen…
Applying the wrong grease is also a big problem. At one facility I worked at, we had about 15-20 difference greases for different equipment in our facility. We did a lot of training on the topic of grease selection and importance of not screwing this up... yet some techs still got it wrong from time to time. With some grease combos, you do not have long to catch the mistake before bearing damage, or even failure, occ…
Hi Cash, Yes, our system ensures that the correct grease is used and that the correct amount is applied at the right time. I heard a story from a nearby power plant the other day of the incorrect grease being applied to a bearing. The two mismatched greases reacted poorly and turned to a wax inside the bearing. Needless to say, the bearing failed catastrophically very soon after. Our system not only tracks the grease…
Congrats on the launch. Best case scenario that it is widely adopted: what's stopping others from releasing a similar product? Why haven't they already?
There probably will be followers, especially now we are public.
The number 1 risk is user adoption - ie the guys who have to do the greasing hate it. We have the opportunity to implement it and learn all of the lessons before the followers catch up