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Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

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Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#81

Post by timhall99 »

grawprog wrote: post #66

>On the hardware side: we put RFID tags that fit like washers under each zerk. These are read by a head unit that is retrofittable to existing grease guns, which includes a custom RFID reader integrated into the nozzle. It also includes a flow meter and supporting electronics. Our device has 4G, Wifi and LoRa for comms, but also operates in an offline mode for customers in remote locations. Our hardware is rugged, du…

Thanks for the feedback. In answer to your comments: Each tag that is fit under the zerk is small and cheap, installed just like a washer. They cost about $2.50 USD and once fitted, should last a long time. The expensive equipment is located in the head unit, which attaches to a grease gun. So, most sites will only need a handful of these.

On the software side, the system uses the customer's existing maintenance schedule. The problem that it is solving there is that paper based work orders don't track tasks down to a per zerk basis. At a huge refinery we visited, the lube tech had one work order that they would do all week and close off on a Friday afternoon. There is no way that systems like these can verify that each machine has been correctly greased. In your situation, performing bi-weekly grease runs, the system would be setup to schedule all of your greasing on the nominated days of the grease run and would indicate the required grease volume for each zerk as you went through the rounds to make sure the correct volume is applied. If at the end of the day, you missed one zerk (lets face it, we are all humans here) the system would let you know that it was missed so you could ensure it gets greased.

We don't want to be a third party between a customer and their machines. simply a tool that supports the customer to verify that their machines are being correctly maintained.

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#82

Post by grawprog »

umvi wrote: post #69
grawprog wrote: post #66

>On the hardware side: we put RFID tags that fit like washers under each zerk. These are read by a head unit that is retrofittable to existing grease guns, which includes a custom RFID reader integrated into the nozzle. It also includes a flow meter and supporting electronics. Our device has 4G, Wifi and LoRa for comms, but also operates in an offline mode for customers in remote locations. Our hardware is rugged, du…

> Workers are still stopping to grease machines, they're still using the same amount of grease, greasing the same spots at the same scheduled times. Tracking this by cloud adds nothing really from what I can tell. Except apparently they aren't if the initial claim is to be believed (that $21B of industrial failure is caused by incorrect greasing). If you integrate tracking hardware on a per-zerk basis, you can easily…

Well, for a fraction of the price, one could hire a person who's job it is solely to inspect and keep track of maintenance, it's pretty visually obvious when a zerk hasn't been recently greased.

Seems a lot cheaper than retrofitting my machines and greaseguns at my expense and paying for ongoing service for a company I have zero reason to trust will even exist in a year.

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#83

Post by SteveGreaseBoss »

grawprog wrote: post #66

>On the hardware side: we put RFID tags that fit like washers under each zerk. These are read by a head unit that is retrofittable to existing grease guns, which includes a custom RFID reader integrated into the nozzle. It also includes a flow meter and supporting electronics. Our device has 4G, Wifi and LoRa for comms, but also operates in an offline mode for customers in remote locations. Our hardware is rugged, du…

Thanks for taking to time to raise your concerns, these are all legitimate questions that have been raised by our customers during our sales process

Our your second point - the problem we are solving is human error and principal/agent problem, which can be addressed by management controls. We have seen the management controls fail when there varying skill and experience levels in the maitenance crew, when the operation has a transient workforce (say contractors at a harvest) or when the records are falsified. Falsification of records is principal agent - the person responsible for greasing doesn't wear the cost of downtime, labour and spares to fix it.

GreaseBoss can be used to eliminate all of these factors - customers who buy it may be a gold mine in PNG, or a potato farm in Victoria, a smelter in India. These types of operations have minmimal management controls compared to a modern developed world operation. As with everything, GreaseBoss has a sweet spot in the ecomony and it may not be where you have previously worked.

On your second point - we added a computer to a grease gun... that runs the risk of over complicating a simple tool, let alone an RFID on a zerk. We have worked really hard to make our system simple - we know our users are not going to tolerate a screen freeze, syncing errors etc - its not perfect now, but its on the trajectory. We have built our system with minmial impact to completing the current task, the only change is that you have to charge the unit at night. The only input interface is the RFID (no buttons) and the output on the screen. We want our users to pick it up and it just works.

With regards to the final comments, we have a version of the system that can be deployed locally - therefore no risk of losing data, bricking the device. The system works entirely offline, it only needs to sync once - provided the schedule never changes. And the third party can guide you around the plant, tell you how much grease and when its required, if you have a day off it can ensure the greasing is completed to the same standard as you would.

I hope this answwers your quesitons - thanks for making me work hard :)

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#84

Post by timhall99 »

umvi wrote: post #69
grawprog wrote: post #66

>On the hardware side: we put RFID tags that fit like washers under each zerk. These are read by a head unit that is retrofittable to existing grease guns, which includes a custom RFID reader integrated into the nozzle. It also includes a flow meter and supporting electronics. Our device has 4G, Wifi and LoRa for comms, but also operates in an offline mode for customers in remote locations. Our hardware is rugged, du…

> Workers are still stopping to grease machines, they're still using the same amount of grease, greasing the same spots at the same scheduled times. Tracking this by cloud adds nothing really from what I can tell. Except apparently they aren't if the initial claim is to be believed (that $21B of industrial failure is caused by incorrect greasing). If you integrate tracking hardware on a per-zerk basis, you can easily…

Yes, precisely. In many industries, like mining, when a piece of equipment fails a root cause analysis is performed to identify the reason for failure. Incorrect greasing is a huge contributor to this. One of the world's largest bearing suppliers (SKF) note that over 36% of bearing failures is due to incorrect greasing "wrong lubricant, wrong quantity, wrong lubrication interval" (source link is below)

Tracking the completion of lubrication is the only way to verify that the equipment is actually being correctly maintained.

https://www.skf.com/binaries/pub12/Images/0901d1968064c148-B...

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#86

Post by timhall99 »

grawprog wrote: post #82
umvi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workers are still stopping to grease machines, they're still using the same amount of grease, greasing the same spots at the same scheduled times. Tracking this by cloud adds nothing really from what I can tell. Except apparently they aren't if the initial claim is to be believed (that $21B of industrial failure is caused by incorrect greasing). If you integrate tracking hardware on a per-zerk basis, you can easily…

Well, for a fraction of the price, one could hire a person who's job it is solely to inspect and keep track of maintenance, it's pretty visually obvious when a zerk hasn't been recently greased. Seems a lot cheaper than retrofitting my machines and greaseguns at my expense and paying for ongoing service for a company I have zero reason to trust will even exist in a year.

I understand your concerns. We are running trials with numerous companies (large and small) right now so that we can develop case studies to understand and communicate the ROI of the system.

The pricing of GreaseBoss is positioned to be less than the cost of having a full-time hire looking after the greasing alone (based on Western country pay scales).

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#87

Post by timhall99 »

tylerben wrote: post #73
timhall99 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks Tyler. Your line of work seems interesting. We are probably not there just yet but in 6 months or so, it would be interesting to see how we could extract more value out of the data we're receiving. What is the name of your company?

Used to work for LRE Water ( https://lrewater.com/ ). Currently working for Stae ( https://stae.co/ ) doing similar things but at a much larger scale. Freelance as well ( https://www.lostcreekdesigns.co/ ).

Awesome Tyler! I'll keep note of your freelance page for reference later.

Cheers

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#88

Post by SteveGreaseBoss »

grawprog wrote: post #82
umvi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workers are still stopping to grease machines, they're still using the same amount of grease, greasing the same spots at the same scheduled times. Tracking this by cloud adds nothing really from what I can tell. Except apparently they aren't if the initial claim is to be believed (that $21B of industrial failure is caused by incorrect greasing). If you integrate tracking hardware on a per-zerk basis, you can easily…

Well, for a fraction of the price, one could hire a person who's job it is solely to inspect and keep track of maintenance, it's pretty visually obvious when a zerk hasn't been recently greased. Seems a lot cheaper than retrofitting my machines and greaseguns at my expense and paying for ongoing service for a company I have zero reason to trust will even exist in a year.

Our main compeittors are to do nothing and hire a specialist.

It turns out there is a whole dicipline of lubrication specialists called Tribologists - they have an association and chapters in many industrial cities.

Many operations have a target to reduce head count - aside from the salary cost, the logic is that people cannot get hurt if they are not on site. We have seen many cases hiring a specialist cannot be justified on both cost and safety.

As the maitenance workforce is reduced, the same level of performance is required. GreaseBoss is positioning so that anyone on site can pick up the tool, know what to do and then do the greasing. This way site can maintain the same maintenance performance, without increasing head count or putting additional people in the plant.

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#89

Post by timhall99 »

seany wrote: post #64
timhall99 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Sean, Yes, we have a Milwaukee grease gun with the measured output. What our system has shown is that their "measurement" is not perfectly accurate all the time. The biggest factor is the human performing the greasing remembering how much grease is required for each individual zerk and how often they require greasing. Reading the user manuals of some of this equipment shows that one machine might have 10 zerks tha…

I think we're agreeing :) I was getting at the fact that full integration would be cool because then you both wouldn't need to remember, or even pay attention to setting it.

Ah right.. I see your angle. Yes, it is something that we have looked into. This is our first product into the space and we anticipate many iterations and many more to come ;)

Re: Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

#90

Post by SteveGreaseBoss »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #40
whalesalad wrote: post #4

Never in my life did I think I would see the intersection of a zerk fitting and cloud computing.

If I had a use case, I'd consider them just to be able to mention the "GreaseCloud" at serious meetings.

Our metric for our investor deck is NUM: Nipples under Management

Zerks are called Grease Nipples in Australia ;)

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