Motors and Drives

Cargill & Allied Services Group Announce New Motor Repair Requirements, Specification, and Audit Process to Qualify Motor Repair Suppliers

Led by a team of maintenance and reliability experts from the Cargill Maintenance & Reliability Center of Excellence and Allied Services Group, a new motor repair specification is born. This could be the first of its kind to include a thorough process to insure that motor repair suppliers using the specification have the capability to meet it. The 60 page (including forms and appendices) specification includes just about every motor repair detail imaginable for repairing AC, DC and wound rotor motors.

Bob Griffith, Maintenance and Reliability Team Leader at Cargill's Eddyville, Iowa plant, worked diligently with David Hamilton of Allied Services Group to develop the specification and process by which motor repair vendors serving Cargill would be evaluated. Several visits were made to local motor repair vendors already serving Cargill's corn milling group in Iowa including Hupp Electric in Cedar Rapids. Allied Services Group has a Select Supplier Agreement to help Cargill improve the maintenance and reliability of its vast operations. While the first revision to the specification is already underway, Cargill now has a process in place that will improve process reliability while reducing energy consumption with every motor sent out for repair.

"We recognize that our repair specification and audit process is going to be a living document," stated Griffith. "As we learn more with this very important group of vendors and technological advances are made in materials and equipment, we will update our spec and continually challenge our motor repair partners to be the best."

The audit process begins with a request for information (paper survey) from any motor repair shop interested in working with Cargill. This survey is filled out by the motor repair vendor and submitted to Cargill for review. Once this step is passed the next step is to have a Cargill-approved motor repair auditor tour the prospective facility. If all criteria are met, the motor repair facility is then required to become an Advanced Energy certified shop under the Proven Efficiency Verification (PEV) program within the first year of working with Cargill.

"We looked at several quality assurance programs and selected Advanced Energy's because it was developed specifically for the motor repair process and it is the only program that provides real evidence of the motor shop's ability with the before and after testing done in their lab," said Griffith.

"Obviously we are very pleased to have Cargill adopt our program into their specification," said Kitt Butler, Director, Motors and Drives at Advanced Energy. We are already seeing renewed interest from motor repair shops that in the past have been hesitant because their customers were not asking for it. Now they are."