CDE has announced plans to showcase its SmartTech plant management app at Hillhead and demonstrate how real-time Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) data is driving consistent tonnes per hour.
CDE SmartTech provides real-time data and insights and is designed to enable customers to understand their plant’s performance, schedule maintenance, and easily order parts.
Chris McKeown, director of customer solutions at CDE, said, “This technology is all about ensuring our customers are achieving their target tonnes per hour, every hour. It’s not about the best performing hour that day, but how plant performance is monitored and optimised in real time to sustainably maintain that tonnage over the long term: per day, per week and per year. This is where return on investment is made.”
Sensors fitted to a plant provide up to 300 data points and continuously stream real-time performance reports. The live feed is accessible 24/7 to customers through a mobile app, and CDE also has dedicated staff remotely monitoring OEE data to identify trends, provide proactive maintenance, and advise on plant optimisation.
Norman Kane, head of global support at CDE, added, “We’re able to respond in a very agile way, analysing data in the moment to improve results for our customers. With SmartTech we can identify irregularities and intervene before a major downtime event occurs.
“In February this year, one of our customers who operates a 375 tonnes per hour plant, 24 hours per day, seven days a week, achieved this throughput for 92% of their total operating hours. This is just one example of the consistent high performance that we’re able to monitor through this innovative technology.”
CDE SmartTech can be installed in new equipment or retrofitted to an existing wash plant.
Fife Silica, a subsidiary of Scottish building materials producer Patersons Quarries, had CDE SmartTech integrated in its new silica sand wash plant when it was commissioned in March 2024. After seeing the benefits, the business invested in having SmartTech retrofitted to an existing C&D waste recycling plant.
MD Tom Paterson explained, “The data and insights we are getting from this technology are invaluable. Once we saw this in action on our silica plant it was a foregone conclusion that we’d move to retrofit our existing plant. It’s great to see CDE SmartTech up and running across both of our sites and we’re looking forward to seeing the impact over the coming years.”
