Xcelerate20 Features Blair Fraser with UE Systems on Disrupting Bearing Lubrication Through Automation

Fluke Reliability's Xcelerate20 and the Industrial Talk Podcast is talking to Blair Fraser, Global Director of IIoT Solutions at UE Systems about “Disrupting Your Bearing Lubrication Through Automation”. Get the answers to your “Bearing Lubrication” questions along with Blair's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

It's been said that as many as 60% to 80% of premature bearing failures are lubrication related. Whether it is due to over lubrication, under lubrication, or simply using the wrong lubricant for the wrong application, it is still a lubrication related failure. One challenge for maintenance & reliability professionals is how to optimize their lubrication PM’s. Ultrasound technology is one way to assist in enhancing lubrication procedures. Using ultrasound, we can prevent lubrication failures due to over and under lubrication.

You can find out more about Blair and the wonderful team at UE Systems by the links below. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2020. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

BLAIR'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thisisyourai/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ue-systems/

Company Website: https://uesystems.com/

SIGNUP FOR FLUKE RELIABILITY'S XCELERATE20, RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOT – YOU WILL NOT BE DISSAPPOINTED!

PODCAST VIDEO:

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

lubrication, friction, IoT, IIoT, bearing, grease, data, people, blair, technology, lubricate, put, system, uesystems, industry, called, companies, lubricant, solution, talk

SPEAKERS

Scott MacKenzie, Blair Fraser

00:04

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving.

Scott MacKenzie 00:18

So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go Hey there, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. We are 100% You know, this, this platform, this industrial talkback platform is dedicated to you. But women and men of manufacturing the women and men of industry, you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly. you innovate. But you innovate and you are changing lives and the world around you. That's why we celebrate you on this podcast pretty much every day. That's right. Now we're in love with you every single day. And that's why you are the heroes on this particular podcast. All right. Another great interview. And this is associated with Xcelerate20 right, Xcelerate20 that is a conference brought to you by those wonderful people at Fluke Reliability. We're going to be talking a little bit about that. His name is Blair Fraser. And that's f ra s. Er, ue systems is the company talking about i o t let's get rockin. Yep. All right, I want you to get out your calendar, paper pencil, something to mark it up. And I want to put this date down, you got to put these dates down on that particular calendar. It is November 17 to November 19. It is a virtual conference. Of course, it is because we live in in this pandemic world right now. And it's Xcelerate20. That's Xcelerate20.

Scott MacKenzie 01:48

That is a conference brought to you by those incredible folks at roll Fluke Reliability. And I need for you to put that down. And and quite honestly, you know what's going to happen. You can also listen to Blair Fraser, he is one of the incredible one of many, trust me one of many incredible professionals that are going to be sharing how to do things the right way in the world of asset management, reliability, IoT industry for Dotto, and anything in between the theme, the theme of this particular event, and boy, is it timely, I just want to make sure you understand it is timely. And I'm going to look over here at my other computer because I want to make sure I get it straight. The six domains of resilience. Now, you know, as well as I do to build a business of resilience, and I've been preaching this on the industrial talk podcast is that you're going to have to collaborate, you're going to have to innovate, you're going to have to educate with a sense of speed and purpose, right. And you're going to have to be able to put these processes in place. So that if Lord willing, it doesn't happen. But if it does happen, you get hit by the the two finger death, blow of the COVID or some other unusual virus, you'll have a business of resiliency. So the themes that are going to be communicated to you going forward specifically with the Xcelerate20 casts of incredible professionals is the sixth domain of resilience. Number one, vision that is purpose goal. Right, and congruency. Okay. composure. That's, that's the other one. We're talking about reasoning, health, tenacity. And of course, my favorite, my favorite is collaboration. And I'm always into that. But all of this is wrapped up in, you're going to be innovating, you're going to be definitely educating. And it is an absolute honor, that I have the opportunity to not just speak to Blair but others that will be presenting at this particular conference. And I'm telling you, they're going to bring the lumber, they're going to bring the excitement, they're going to bring the energy because you deserve it because you need to learn about this. And this is a boy, it's just a timely topic, everything that's associated with, you know, industry for Dotto IoT devices, you name it, it is a timely conversation. Now, let's get on with the interview. Blair Frasier now want to make sure you understand that that is with an S S, not a z that's FRASER, you IE systems is the company he is the global director of iiot solutions at that wonderful fine business. And we are talking about in this particular episode talking about lubrication and strategies associated with using the IoT solutions and the devices associated with it so that you can properly lube your equipment which is very doggone important, I'm telling you right now, look into that. Reach out to them. Now, everything is going to be there, you're going to have to get involved once again, November 17, through the 19th. Xcelerate20 is the event. I'm going to have that link out there. If not, you just go onto Google and pop that in there. Make sure it's an axe, and you'll find all you need. Get engaged. Get on it. I'm going to be doing it. So shoot you. Alright, let's get on with that interview. Blair Frasier is the one in the hot seat. We had a great time. Enjoy the conversation. Blair, welcome to the industrial talk podcast absolute honor that you found time in your busy schedule to talk to the listeners of this fine podcast.

Blair Fraser 05:41

It is a fine podcast. Got it. Thank you so much. Yeah. Heck, yeah. Well, that's a way to start a podcast.

Scott MacKenzie 05:49

That's right. Thank you very much for joining. All right. That was excellent. Yeah. All right. For the listeners out there, you can tell that Blair's got a little spunk in him. He's quite peppery background into who you are, and why you're such a great professional there Blair. And then we're going to talk a little bit about lubrication.

Blair Fraser 06:06

Well, I can I can give you some background about a great side of me, but absolutely. So my name is Blair Fraser, I'm the director of IoT over at ue systems, ue systems been around for 40 years in the ultrasound business in preventive maintenance, energy optimization, things like that, using ultrasound as a technology. I started my career as boots on the ground, I'm actually an a not a very good one, a licensed electrician. And what I say is, is even my own family wouldn't hire me to install a light bulb. So I think that speaks to the, to my skill set from that perspective, because I didn't do it very long. And I do go back and, and get into engineering on the electrical and automation side. So yeah, I spent, I spent the first part of my career on the shop floor, which I think, brought me a lot of real sense real life. And then I've ventured out in the technology space, the last three years prior to joining YUI systems, I focused on artificial intelligence. One is a guy like me doing an artificial intelligence, I still don't know, to this day. And again, the way I learned artificial intelligence was through brute force. And that brought me into the technology game and now at YUI systems focusing on on technology, how can leverage the power of ultrasound and bring that to more people in a more convenient, more safe way? You know,

Scott MacKenzie 07:19

what's interesting about AI, I think pre virus, pre pandemic pre two fingered, you know, death punch, I believe that people said, innovation is important to my, my process, my manufacturing my industry, yeah, but I'm going to sort of run a two to five year timeline on it COVID hits, though, then all of a sudden, we need to create a business of resiliency, and, and at that base, we've got to be able to, I mean, we've got to bring the innovation, and that's where you sort of shine. And that's where ue systems shine. Because you're you're right there where you're creating solutions for businesses that keep them up and running as long as they possibly can, which is very important. Let's talk a bit about that.

Blair Fraser 08:05

Yeah, it is, I think from a point of resiliency, I think I think it was the CEO of GM said it best if you go into this pandemic, and come out the same way you came in, you fail to take an opportunity, right. And I think it's a challenge to all of us. And what we're seeing is, it's very clear to this day is those people that invested in innovation, or an automation or some part of their digital transformation process going in to COVID with pandadoc, whatever you want to call, I don't want to go down now. But you had a better opportunity in front of you from those that did not write and we can clearly see it. And I'm sure you've done this across all industries or certain industries that lag and there's gonna be many listeners go, yeah, that's me. Right. And we all have that excuse that I'm gonna compete and innovate. But I think what we've learned from this type of technology is small incremental steps, right? That is the key. And that's what we're trying to do a ue systems. I'll give you an example. You mentioned, you know, we help companies operate safer, more reliable, more energy efficient, and we do, but the key part to remember is we are one piece of a larger puzzle, right? And what I love what's happening in industry is the big giants, right? A companies and the small mom and pop shops now are all contributing to a better, more efficient work environment. See,

Scott MacKenzie 09:21

that's, that's interesting. You bring that up, because, you know, everybody understands that the one side of that sword and that sword is painful that that COVID sword, yes, we got it. People are hurting. There's some challenges the other side, and you just brought it up, you sort of touched upon it. There is a greater spirit of collaboration. There has to be and there

Blair Fraser 09:39

has to be people listening to this podcast. We're the ones that running it. And I love it because the giant companies are not going to end the event I'm talking about vendors are not going to own the ecosystem. We've seen it we've seen companies try to we'll build this ecosystem for you and it's going to have everything No, you know what, you know what we're really good at altra sound you know what, we're not really good at a lot of Other things, so don't come to us with the other things, we are going to supply you with world class best in class altra sound solutions, use it for that, if you want to tie it into other systems, that's great. You're going to play in their sandbox,

Scott MacKenzie 10:12

too. And I love that. I think that that is a beautiful statement, because I, I really believe that and I believe the fact that when we start to, to look back, we're gonna say, Okay, yeah, some people, yeah, they didn't take advantage, but there's gonna be a lot of people who are saying, that was the best that that unfortunate situation was the best for my business. Because I was able to contact Blair, we created greater focus into what we needed to do just because we needed to, and we're not dealing with all the, you know, the, you know, the shiny objects out

Blair Fraser 10:44

there, it's great to be lots of shiny things. Yeah. And, and that's, that's what I tell people is, you can go and start to Google IoT solutions. And you can find so many solutions, I lost track, I used to keep track of them and follow them to see technology and I, I love technology, even it's from a competitor. I love it, right? Because we're all contributing to the better good, the sandbox is huge, right? But here's the and keep this in mind. I'm the director of IoT a UV systems, companies, people don't need IoT. Right, what they need is a solution to a problem. IoT is a mechanism is a tool that could possibly solve that problem, not guarantee it, but it's a it's a tool, a method to solve a problem, what you need to do is figure out how to solve a problem. And hopefully IoT has an aspect to that. I love it. And you're absolutely spot on. And I think those conversations are happening, because I think that people are saying, like, I can't, I can't dilly dally, I've got to come up with solutions to my problem. Right, those problems are what? Here's the reality and and another CEO of Microsoft, right, came out and said, digital transformation changed in more than two months that didn't last 10 years or something like that, and totally agree, because what are we seeing is, you know, a lot of us are gonna listen to this podcast, and we're sitting at home, I, I used to be on a plane every other day. I haven't left my house. I'm getting I don't know what to do. I got it like painted or something. Right. I haven't left my house. So here's the challenge. I'm now supporting customers, I'm having these conversations are in technical talks with all these companies, and I'm doing it from from my house, and it's something I could I thought was never possible before. You know, I'm a face to face person, I want to look you in the eyes, make sure I trust you see how you act, make sure you put your shopping cart away. Right. those type of things? And then and then, you know, do that. But I'm learning these face to face conversations. No, we're lucky we know each other from the past. Right? But what a difference these these technologies can do.

Scott MacKenzie 12:41

Right? And you're absolutely correct. And I think it's forever changed, right? I mean, it's it's harder for business to justify Blair to jump on a plane to go talk to somebody, when maybe it's just a 15 minute conversation, we could do it by zoom, and it'd be just every bit as effective. And I think that there are going to be other consequences that are resulting from this. And some people can say, Why do I need that office? Right? I just stay in your house and no talking, you know,

Blair Fraser 13:08

well, that's right. So here's the thing. Now, now many of us are getting overloaded with zoom meetings and things like that. Yeah. So you've been proven that these virtual meetings are way more tiring than actually meeting in person. So if you ever get done a day of just back to back meetings, and you're exhausted, you're like, I didn't do anything. Well, it was talking to a screen, but I'm exhausted. That's why. But we flip that on to the end of what we're seeing now with IoT, in particular condition monitoring. And I have gone out and said, I think we're at a crisis point, I think we have a serious problem with IoT and condition monitoring. Because I think we are getting so much data, so much data, we don't know what to do with now we can strap a sensor on to anything and get data. You don't necessarily what it means, right? And I come from me, I know the value of collecting data data, I still don't believe data is the new gold, I believe, insights. Yeah, new gold data is just the raw material, right? Gold is the iron ore if you will to get that gold. But we're focusing on capturing this data. And for the AI background, absolutely collect data. never delete data, always save that day. You never know when you need it. But really what we're trying to get to is insights, we're trying to solve that problem. How do we get to insights? So you can start to log in these systems and get all this information. But how do we get insights? Right? But

Scott MacKenzie 14:23

isn't there a way to be able to say, Okay, I'm collected data, and there's data, no man is a tsunami. And when somebody says I can, I can put an IoT device out there, and that device is cheap. And all I do is just sort of stick it out there. And now it's into the cloud, right? There's data everywhere, and it is a tsunami. The key is to be able to take that data and really create the parameters of saying, this is important data. This is not important data, get rid of that, because maybe it's not, but then of course, you want to save it all.

Blair Fraser 14:55

Yeah, of course. Yeah. No, and AI is gonna help it AI is gonna help you That data start to tell us and I love it big fan of artificial intelligence. But also, there is also there's data, there's insights and a very, very small portion of that data we're collecting is what I call actionable insights. What can I, what can I do from the data turned to insights turned to actual instance? I can do and let's let's talk about a bearing, for example. Yeah. So bearings, they're spinning around in our plants or our industry everywhere, right? It is said that 80% of premature bearing failures can be traced back to port lubrication practices. Right?

Scott MacKenzie 15:38

Yeah. Too much not enough. That's right. Whatever. It's just like, right. Yeah.

Blair Fraser 15:44

Right. So so it to me, it's a smoking gun. Right. Emma says, Well, I have a have a downtime issue with my rotating equipment. Well, your bearings, I think was SPF come up with the study saying less than 11% of roller elementary anti friction bearings meet their design life?

Scott MacKenzie 15:58

Less than 11%? Less than 11. So I don't know if it was 10.9. round down and say

Blair Fraser 16:05

10%, we can say that, right? So bearing we know bearings are failing. But here we are, in my opinion, going back to that crisis, I think we're in we go to the PF curve, every reliability maintenance person probably knows that pf curve, right. And everyone's racing to pee pee is that point that has identified by Nolan heaves a identifiable physical condition that something's going wrong? Right, right. So every single person, and companies there is saying, Hey, I can detect this point P on this bearing before anybody else, right. That's what everyone's racing to. Right to give us enough time to start planning. Right. Right. That's great. Because, you know, I don't get really caught with my pants down, I can start to plan, right. But, but there's, you look at that PDF curve, there's also a domain, just to the left of that was called the predictive domain called the proactive domain. Right? This is where we're trying to prevent the failure from happening in the first place. So you know, Benjamin Franklin, one ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? I think that holds true with this, too. What if we were to put just a small, every person out there listening to it for every $1 you spent at at detecting a failure, you put 10 cents of that into trying to eliminate failure from happening in the first place, or even not even eliminated, but prolonging it?

Scott MacKenzie 17:25

Yeah, I was just gonna say you can prolong it, because eventually, just bearings themselves will eventually where no matter, let's say you're hitting your lubrication. on target, right? That's just gonna eventually over time, where, but the key is that one moment when you can pull it out properly, put another one in, and you're back up and running. It's better than having a catastrophic type of deal.

Blair Fraser 17:50

That's right. So that's what we're trying to do. And that's really what we're trying to do with the with IoT and ultrasound. So what we're doing with that is, we've already established for decades, the process or this idea called ultrasound assisted or guided lubrication. And what we're doing there is we're measuring friction, right? The purpose of an anti friction or rotor element bearing is to reduce friction. So it makes sense. Let's monitor friction. And what that friction tells us is two things. Exactly. When that thin film, less than one mil, on those ball bearings, has started to degradation, it's not there, and we cruise friction. So it's telling us when we need to re lubricate or re grease, right, but we also use that friction to tell us precisely how much lubrication is required. Okay, so we're getting to that, you know, common lubrication issue, what I call inadequate greasing, that covers over lubrication and under lubrication. Both are just as bad. No, grease is bad. That makes sense. But guess what, you put too much grease into a bearing you fill that cavity, you create more friction just makes sense,

Scott MacKenzie 18:55

right? So you got those individuals out more is better,

Blair Fraser 18:59

more so right? And I get I get to be fully candid with you here, Scott. I was that guy. When I started my career, I was working in a facility. And I had I thought I was doing this every month I went around and I squeezed that. I said, Yeah, I saw that old grease come out the seal. Right. I must have put enough grease in. It's good. Yeah, I don't Good.

Scott MacKenzie 19:21

Now to the next one.

Blair Fraser 19:22

Yeah. You know, it's interesting vitamin measuring friction, I would have seen, hey, this is literally what happens. You start to add grease a Greece needs a bearing nice Greece, right? You start to lubricate that friction starts to go down, right? You can literally watch it with our software, you start to apply more grease after you've replenished that thin film. Your friction starts to go back up again, past the point that you started that actually made that bearing worse. Right? You've actually clearly by thinking you're adding grease, you've made it worse, right? So here's the challenge. So now we're in this world, this COVID world so what we're trying to do is enable technical To make us better to make us faster to make us smarter, right, and I personally believe that technology is never going to replace proper education experts in this field even with AI. Okay? What I'm saying is we need to enable these people better. So what we see is the average wrench time in a facility can be 30%, which gives the average person or technician about 140 44 minutes a day to do work. Now, if that's your lubrication technician, is 144 minutes to go around and lubricate or she to go lubricate. How many bearings Can you lubricate in that time, right? So here's the challenge. In this COVID world, just like we learned that most of our business can get transferred over to home offices and virtual, obviously, maintenance, very tough, you can't bring assets home with you, we can learn that we don't necessarily need to go to this equipment, right. So the challenges there is we use this ultrasound guided lubrication, we're using technology. In fact, our on track system can bring you that friction level in real time to anybody on any device. Right now, I am looking at the friction of a bearing in a system in the Netherlands on my phone, right? So I can see the friction of that. And what's great about that is it's not data, it's incites friction to me, I understand, right, if this friction to here, I need to lubricate. It's very simple, right? But here's the challenge, when I have to go lubricate, I still have to go out to that vise to go do it. Right, you physically have

Scott MacKenzie 21:31

to I mean, it says, we have to walk out there with the grease gun move we get on that, yeah,

Blair Fraser 21:36

I'm gonna grab my grease gun, I'm gonna get hurt. And I'm going to put on my safety equipment because things are spinning or falling all that stuff, right. So this was one solution to a problem of three common failures of inadequate lubrication. The right lubricant is a huge issue.

Scott MacKenzie 21:53

I got it right down there, I got the right grease. Yet no rain again, a baby.

Blair Fraser 21:58

So what have we done, we've recommended procedures in place. Color coat, your grease nipples make different fittings, so there's no physical way you can put the wrong grease in. And the third one is contamination. Break. Big. You don't want anything in that, right? This is contrary to belief is smaller the particle of more damage, it does better off putting a bowling ball in there then pieces, right, which you can see the bowling ball. You could Yeah, so So here we are. So even with ultrasound guided lubrication, we're still making sure we're lubricating not based on time, because we have learned that time based anything in our world is bad, right. So typically, you know, practices are time based, every month, I'm going to go give it a shot, a lubrication, ultrasound guided lubrication, we still go around on a time based method, but we're measuring friction, okay, this friction hasn't changed, I don't need to lubricate, right. And then the other side of the fence is saying, I'm going to put in what's called an automatic lubrication device. Okay, these are individual units, sometimes through distribution block, which dispense a very precise amount of lubricant or grease into a bearing at a specific time. So every day, I'm going to put in eight CCS or every month, I'm going to sweat it

Scott MacKenzie 23:10

driven by data, it's driven by insights, you're not just doing it just because but your

Blair Fraser 23:16

log it in it is you go by data, but you're doing it by time, typically. So you're doing it still, every day, I'm going to put a little bit of grease in there, which is, which is which is good, which is good. But you still don't know if that little bit of grease everyday is required, because you still don't know the friction, right? So you set these devices up. Some of them do have vibration sensors in them to make sure you're only going to lubricate when it's running. But you're still not getting condition based lubrication. So on one side, we're saying, hey, do condition based lubrication, you have other people on your side that saying I have these automatic devices that are going to take care of it for me. And hopefully, I've set up the right, time based. So it doesn't take much to think about what if I put real time friction into these automatic lubrications? Where I'm sending a signal based on friction to a lubrication device. Yeah, that thin film, I don't care if a month has passed, two days have passed, because it depends if I how I treated it, what the load was on it, how fast it was, things like that. So welcome to the contract smart loop, we develop a product that we can then monitor that friction in real time on my phone. And guess what, if I wanted to with a proper security, because IoT is all about security, I can hit this lubricate button on my phone. And what it's going to do is send a signal to that automatic lubrication device and dispense a known quantity of contaminant free exactly the right lubricant into that bearing. And I could hit that button. Watch that fall. If I need to lubricate a little more, I hit that button again. This is what technology is doing for us. Right. And I think it's very important to notice we're not replacing that lubrication expert, you still need to know the fundamentals of lubrication, you need to select the right grease. You need to make sure it's the right thing. quantity going in there. Right? But you have a real time feedback mechanism to say when and how much grease to put in there.

Scott MacKenzie 25:07

Yeah. See, this is so interesting, because I love the innovation that exists out there, especially within IoT. And, and how it like, again, you know, this whole COVID thing has brought that to right up front. And people are having these meaningful conversations and, and that that solution by YUI systems is just fantastic.

Blair Fraser 25:29

It's It's fun, but it also goes to work I think technology is going to fit in. And regardless of how good the situation, the solution is, the cost, there has to be a cost to benefit ratio. Right? Because if this is too much, you know what, I'm gonna take that risk, I'm gonna put an automatic Luber are still gonna go in and do routes. And that makes sense. Right? So we had to think of technology. What's great is technology's adopting so quick is driving the cost down of everything, to take your data, put it to the cloud, we're not in the cloud business, right? We host our data in the cloud, but it's not our cloud. No, I'm not. I don't I'm not competing with Jeff bazel. store data in the cloud or or, or Bill Gates there. Right. So

Scott MacKenzie 26:11

I would highly advise against that. Just you don't want to get into that market. I think that's right.

Blair Fraser 26:15

Well, though, so that's the great part, right? And really, it's the it's the freedom with with COVID. In the example in the beta customer, we had their lubrication guy was camping. So I said, Hey, we have the system on. I'm looking at this data. I'm not a lubrication guy, right? I mean, I am from some parts, but I don't spend day in and day out thinking about lubrication. So he says, Hey, I'm on vacation. I'm up in this national park. I'm going to look at the data. He grabbed his cell phone, he's looking at that friction data. No, he did. He hit the button. He lubricated precisely while on vacation. Right? I apologize for interrupting his vacation. But it proves the point there that even if he was at home, right, or even a in the plant at his desk,

Scott MacKenzie 27:03

right. But does your system does the this ultra town IoT IoT device? Yeah, proactively. Let's say it's seeing something something's going on. And I don't have to I'm, I'm eating dinner, and then all of a sudden I receive a lip. So that to me is important, too.

Blair Fraser 27:25

It is absolutely. So it's going to tell you, so it's going to fit in that predictive domain. And I'm not going to get into the debate of the PDF curve on which technology is and what sooner because that's just a wormhole. And obviously, as things start to fail, you're going to have friction. So on the lubrication side, there really has to be two parts. And with any system, what I challenge is the biggest challenge we have is not cost. It's not installation. It's culture change. Its culture change, right? How many times and ensure if when you talk to people in RCM, do you, you do an RCM, you get a binder and it sits on the shelf,

Scott MacKenzie 28:01

90 gets in the 90 percentile range. That's right. So justify.

Blair Fraser 28:06

I mean, I used to I used to sell these products. And I go months later, two months later, a year later, how's this new product? And they hand me the box? You blow the dust off? Yeah, we haven't done it yet. Okay. All right. Well, you better buy another one. That is true. That's true. Here's the culture change. So if we're taking that culture shift from someone that's going out with the grease gun and lubricating themselves, right, and I have met those people, and I am always surprised how darn accurate they are. I know this bearing I can I get a feel for and I'm going to put it in. And right. I'm a technology guy. And my nurses say you're absolutely wrong. But Gosh, darn duh, right? A lot of the times too. So that tribal knowledge is very important. So if I say to that person, I'm going to put a system in or your boss is going to put a system in, that's just going to go lubricate on its own. You don't do anything, right. Not very good for cultural change. Are you gonna trust that system? No matter how good I tell you that algorithm is that's doing this, the math and all that kind of stuff. Right? Right. So there's a manual aspect to it being this bearing requires lubricate lubrication. You go and you lubricate it as if you're using a grease on instead of squeezing a grease gun, you're hitting a button on yourself, right? You still have complete control. You know what, I don't want to put any more in there. Because I know last time I lost one and blah, blah, right? We do have an auto feature, which is going to see an eight decibel increase in that friction, which is standard. It's going to start to inject crease very slowly over time with thresholds on either side to make sure we don't over lubricate it. Right? So it's going to put a crease in and it's going to have stopping points. Listen, I put this much recent and that friction is not changing. It's an indication that there's a fault with that bearing. I can mask it maybe for a day with lubricant. right but it's going to come back. So a patented algorithm in that it's going to do it but we give the person option to build confidence in that because what we're doing and this goes back to data is we're storing every time that bearing is lubricated. We know when it was lubricated how long it took to get lubricated that lubrication cycle and how much lubrication was required. And we start tracking time in between. So hey, Scott, last time you lubricated this you used I gotta make this number up 10 grams, right? And it only lasted over two hours. Right? Okay, interesting. Hey, this time using 11. And it took me three hours. I'm making these times up, but you can notice, right, but that's very insightful information. Yeah, that feeds into that automatic lubrication, right? Yeah. And and so it to me, it becomes that trust issue. So we really want to put what I'm calling the lubrication cockpit, right? Put that person in front of it, have the screen build trust in that system? You are You are the teacher, this system is the apprentice right here, install it is going to take care of everything for me. No, you need to teach it, you need to work it.

Scott MacKenzie 30:49

It doesn't take much if there was like a damn moment. And I was leveraging and using my technology and it failed on me. You know, all of a sudden, that culture will shift on a dime and get one man out there and the day they're gonna

Blair Fraser 31:04

pop out. You get one kick at the can to prove yourself one in that thing is flying off a bridge this system.

Scott MacKenzie 31:12

Right? It is so damn true, man. Yeah, I've never seen anything so fast.

Blair Fraser 31:16

That's right. And here's so here's what we're doing. Once you build confidence, you want to build it to the or put it in an automatic mode. It's going to send you something it's going to say, hey, Scott, just I'm so obviously, it actually might be cool, but actually says verbatim, but hey, Scott, just to let you know, this bearing requires lubrication. I'm going to go and I'm going to lubricate it for you. And I did it. I put in 10 grams of grease over this amount of period, I dropped the friction from here down to here. I couldn't quite get it down to baseline. Because I was afraid of over greasing it, right. But I got it that friction down. Right. So it's going to notify you that it did it. You can say, Hey, good job next time, be more aggressive, put a little more in. Right. Right. Right. So it's it's a feedback mechanism, it's always going to tell you what it does. But this is really where I think technology is getting, we're at the point of building apprentices of ourselves right of our tribal knowledge. And then passing that knowledge along. So I think that's where we're going to have, you know, these types of systems, right. And again, it goes back to that first statement. It's not data, it's it's it's very actionable insights. This bearing requires lubrication. There's no ifs, ands or buts, right. It's not here's a bunch of data stand on your head, bite your tongue to your left. Yeah, what does this data look like? Right? It's saying, hey, this requires lubrication? Do you want me to lube it? essentially. So that's what it's Yeah, I love that.

Scott MacKenzie 32:36

I mean, that, that that's powerful stuff. And let's put it this way, you might get one kick out of the can, at the cannon is gonna offer them or whatever. But the reality is, is that IoT is here. The companies like YUI system, people like you are going to be in it for the long haul, right? And it's always going to be around and either you begin, you begin to embrace it, you begin to do it. And you'll just have to, you're just gonna have to go down that route.

Blair Fraser 33:04

It starts but start small, and I've seen

Scott MacKenzie 33:06

it that's that instrumentalism That's cool. Yeah.

33:09

And I have customers that are saying, hey, I want to put 100 of these systems. And I'm like, that's okay. But I'm going to sell you one.

Scott MacKenzie 33:15

Yeah.

Blair Fraser 33:17

It's true. I guess I have one because I want you to get used to, I want you to prove it.

Scott MacKenzie 33:21

Right? No, I

Blair Fraser 33:23

get used to it and feel it out. Right, and then adopt it and then put some more in, right, and it comes back. companies don't need IoT, they need a solution. This is a solution to what causes 80%. But

Scott MacKenzie 33:37

yeah, it's huge. It's huge. Because those things are swirling and spinning and thing. There is a harsh environment, and it's warm, and it's hard. It's cold, it's whatever.

Blair Fraser 33:47

It's like a NASCAR race, it is in the same direction.

Scott MacKenzie 33:50

All left turns it is it's, it's true. All right, let's see, we're gonna have to wrap this up. Now you're gonna be speaking at an event called Xcelerate20? What's your title? What are you going to be talking about there? Um,

Blair Fraser 34:03

probably health stuff, but not getting off. It's gonna it's going to be around IoT, or eating habits? That's right. Yeah, we might we all might have gained some COVID 15 here.

Scott MacKenzie 34:14

No, no, I can't COVID 25, I was committed to the bundle. So I gotta be,

Blair Fraser 34:19

I gotta be talking about the need for a truly automatic lubrication device and how it comes together and what some of the logic is behind it. And really what these types of solutions can do for us, right, and where does this fit in an overall ecosystem? As I said, this is one part, you know, what bearings or motors do fail for other readings, then other reasons and bearings? Guess what? I can't detect those. Right. The first one to tell you, there's still a small percentage of these. So I'm not going to say if you put this on, you'll never have a bearing failure again, because john smith might have run a bearing with the biggest sledge hammer you've ever seen. Well, how does this fit into a bigger ecosystem? I think that's important to talk about.

Scott MacKenzie 35:00

All right. Blair, you were absolutely wonderful Blair Fraser YUI systems is the company. We were talking a lot about lubrication, automatic lubrication, cool little IoT devices that definitely will help your asset run better. I like it. cool

Blair Fraser 35:20

guy. Pretty cool.

Scott MacKenzie 35:22

All right, you listeners out there. Hey, are you active out on LinkedIn? I'm very active. Yes.

Blair Fraser 35:27

All right, you

Scott MacKenzie 35:28

can raise your you'll get all his contact information on industrial talk.com this particular podcast as well as information about Xcelerate20 you need to participate in that. Don't come to me and say, Scott, I don't know where to find that. Because I'll just say no, you do. You got to go up to industrial talk.com. Click on that link, boom, get engaged. You'll be listening to individuals like Blair and others that are just absolutely passionate about what they do. Blair thanks.

Blair Fraser 35:55

My pleasure, Scott.

Scott MacKenzie 35:56

You're awesome. Okay, listeners. Stay tuned, we're gonna be right back.

36:01

You're listening to the industrial talk, Podcast Network.

Scott MacKenzie 36:11

All right, what did I tell you? That's Blair Frasier, man, he is an absolute. I don't know. He's a big thicker baby in the world of lubrication and definitely IoT with that wonderful company called YUI systems. All right, I'm gonna reiterate this, you're gonna have to get your calendar out, get a pencil with that too. And I want to make sure you write down, accelerate, that's ex c, e, l e, Ra te 20. That's a two and a zero. You want to know how to spell that? November 17. Through the 19th. It's all virtual. So go out to Xcelerate20 find out more get engaged because you're going to be listening to some of the best that are in this particular industry. When it comes to reliability. That is fluke. Reliability is putting that back on. Alright. We need resiliency, right? That means you need a vision, composure reasoning, how tenacity collaboration, we're going to expand upon this as we continue to bring in more individuals and talk about that. People will be brave dare greatly change the world. That's what we're all about. Be safe, and we're going to have enough another interview shortly.

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