{"id":20298,"date":"2025-11-27T12:48:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T12:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/?p=20298"},"modified":"2025-11-27T12:48:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T12:48:49","slug":"how-ai-is-modernizing-lubrication-pms-in-corrugating-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/27\/how-ai-is-modernizing-lubrication-pms-in-corrugating-plants\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI Is Modernizing Lubrication PMs in Corrugating Plants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As a young engineer at Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) in Jackson, TN, I was eager to contribute and improve plant processes. One of the first challenges I was handed was helping organize greasing Preventative Maintenance (PM)\u2014a task that sounded simple on paper but turned out to be one of the most complex and overlooked in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I quickly realized how difficult this process was for the people doing the work on the ground. Improper greasing leads to an average box plant hemorrhaging over $200,000 every year due to bearing failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Problem: Unreliable Greasing in a High-Pressure Environment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the corrugating industry, production needs often cut into planned maintenance windows. This puts pressure on technicians to move fast\u2014sometimes too fast. I watched maintenance teams struggle to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Keep track of hundreds or even thousands of grease points manually<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Identify and apply the correct type and amount of lubricant<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Complete their PM routes without skipping bearings due to time constraints<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Record what was done in a reliable, trackable way<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Even with the best intentions,&nbsp;<strong>bearings were being over-greased, under-greased, or missed entirely<\/strong>. On some occasions, the&nbsp;<strong>wrong grease type<\/strong>&nbsp;was applied, simply because the technician grabbed the wrong tube. Maintenance managers had almost no visibility into what was actually done\u2014everything was tracked by paper, memory, or word-of-mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These issues weren\u2019t caused by a lack of skill\u2014they were the result of&nbsp;<strong>a system that had never been modernized<\/strong>. I knew there had to be a better way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Spark of Innovation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Years later, while pursuing my&nbsp;<strong>Master\u2019s&nbsp;<\/strong>at the&nbsp;<strong>University of Waterloo<\/strong>, that same problem kept coming back to me. Why were lubrication PMs still being handled with binders and spreadsheets? Why did we treat such a critical reliability task as an afterthought?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s when I met&nbsp;<strong>Nathan Wong<\/strong>, a brilliant Computer Scientist at Waterloo. We quickly realized we shared a passion for solving real-world problems with smart technology\u2014and that together, we could build a solution that brought modern tools to one of the most outdated processes in the plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s how&nbsp;<strong>GreaseTech<\/strong>&nbsp;was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The GreaseTech Solution: AI + Automation for Lubrication PMs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>GreaseTech combines smart hardware and intelligent software to&nbsp;<strong>bring clarity, consistency, and accountability<\/strong>&nbsp;to manual greasing. It was built with one goal in mind: to make lubrication PMs&nbsp;<strong>accurate, trackable, and impossible to get wrong<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s how it works:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Live Tracking &amp; Historical Records<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every bearing is RFID-tagged and digitally mapped. The gun displays real-time instructions and logs who greased what, when, and with what\u2014ensuring no points are skipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Grease Quantity Control<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The gun stops automatically after dispensing the exact required grease amount, eliminating over- or under-greasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Grease Type Lockout<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there is a mismatch of grease in the gun and needed by the bearing, the system blocks dispensing\u2014protecting equipment from costly mix-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AI-Powered Grease Verification<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This feature was added after a real-world repeating incident at a customer plant.<br>There, a technician unknowingly loaded the&nbsp;<strong>wrong grease cartridge<\/strong>&nbsp;into a gun, and applied it across their&nbsp;<strong>EVOL<\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>corrugator<\/strong>&nbsp;lines. The result?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Costly downtime<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Purging of expensive equipment<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A headache for the entire maintenance and operations team<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>To prevent this from ever happening again, we developed an&nbsp;<strong>AI verification system<\/strong>&nbsp;that uses onboard sensors and visual analysis to confirm that the&nbsp;<strong>correct grease is loaded into the gun\u2014before<\/strong>&nbsp;any greasing starts. It\u2019s a safety net that adds peace of mind for both technicians and managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AI verification of grease cartridge being inserted<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Why It Matters for Corrugated Box Plants<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lubrication PMs may seem small\u2014but in corrugated plants, they are mission-critical. With production running 24\/7 and maintenance windows shrinking, there is little room for error. Any of these bearings failing will cause expensive downtimes. $20,000 is lost every hour the corrugator is down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet greasing is one of the few processes still relying on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Paper records<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Technician memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Verbal handoffs between shifts<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No digital oversight or verification<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s where GreaseTech makes the biggest difference.<br>We take a high-risk, low-visibility process and turn it into&nbsp;<strong>verifiable, error proof process that supports your maintenance team\u2014not burdens them.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>From University Project to Industry Impact<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After developing the technology at the University of Waterloo, we\u2019ve brought GreaseTech into real plants\u2014and it\u2019s already making a difference. <strong>Major companies like Smurfit WestRock, Suzano, and USG are utilizing our system<\/strong>\u00a0to reduce downtime, improve compliance, and give managers visibility into lubrication PMs they\u2019ve never had before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a young engineer at Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) in Jackson, TN, I was eager to contribute and improve plant processes. One of the first challenges I was handed was helping organize greasing Preventative Maintenance (PM)\u2014a task that sounded simple on paper but turned out to be one of the most complex and overlooked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[387],"class_list":{"0":"post-20298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corrugated-folding-carton","8":"tag-packaging-corporation-of-america"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20300,"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20298\/revisions\/20300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}