The Leakiest Link

Hoses are an essential element in many processes. But their importance is often overlooked until there’s a problem. And without an expert, proactive, preventative maintenance programme, those problems can be hard to spot until it’s too late. Then at the best you’re facing downtime, lost production, and emergency call-out costs.  At the worst, you’re facing employee injury. 

Even as legislation becomes more restrictive, hose damage is becoming more common – often as a result of, for example, more aggressive cleaning processes for industrial hose within the Food and Pharmaceutical sectors. At the same time, the consequences of a damaged hose are becoming increasingly serious: not only in terms of personal injury and downtime, but also product contamination, environmental impact or pollution and their associated compensation and clean-up costs.

To help customers keep processes running and keep employees and the environment protected, ERIKS is offering an Integrity Management Programme for Hydraulic Hose, and an Asset Management Solution for Industrial Hose. 

Understanding industrial hoses inside out

One of the greatest challenges of hose inspection is that problems are just as likely to be on the inside as the outside. That’s why an expert inspection using the latest endoscopic camera technology is such an important element of an effective preventative maintenance regime for industrial hose. 

ERIKS’ dedicated industrial hose testing teams offer a full on-site test and inspection service which checks for:

• external wear and abrasion
• tears to the internal liner 
• partial blockages and deposits
• popcorning defects

In addition to visual checks, the industrial hose testing service includes pressure-checking with water or compressed air, pumped though the hoses at 1.5x their rated working pressure to detect any leaks. Hoses which pass inspection can then be certified by ERIKS to meet the relevant legislation, and industry standards such as FDA.

Hydraulic hose assemblies are inspected externally normally at the customer’s premises, against manufactures performance criteria taking in account the actual working conditions, and ERIKS’ accumulated hose life data and years of experience. 

Colouring our judgement

When the tests are complete, the ERIKS teams apply a condition rating and tag to each hose. 

Hoses which are good for continued use are rated green; those which require continued monitoring are rated amber. (It is recommended to have a replacement ordered and placed on standby.) Lastly, hydraulic hoses rated red need replacing at the next scheduled shutdown or an agreed time, while a red-rated industrial hose indicates immediate replacement. 

By having your hose tested and categorised in this way, you are taking positive steps towards an effective proactive maintenance and asset management programme, which will reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of all your hose assets.

Proactive, predictable, productive

With your hose data logged onto an online ERIKS Asset Register, you can benefit from a comprehensive asset management programme and regular inspection routine for all your hydraulic and industrial hose.

You can use the register to quickly identify when a hose was last inspected, to monitor performance, and to predict trends. The register can also be used to track how often a hose has been changed and the reasons why. By flagging-up too-frequent replacement, this allows determination of the root cause, with a view to modifying the hose, installation or application as appropriate, to minimise lifetime costs.

Expert proactive monitoring and preventative maintenance from ERIKS’ hose experts is available now, to reduce unplanned downtime and emergency call-out fees, ensure optimum uptime and productivity, and cut the total cost of ownership of all your hose assets. Meanwhile, a cloud-based hose management system for industrial and hydraulic hose is in the pilot phase of testing with an ERIKS global customer, with a view to further improving ERIKS’ hose asset management capabilities and further reducing your hose TCO.