Quaker Houghton, a global leader in industrial process fluids, has launched a new platform that allows manufacturers to measure, control, and optimize the performance of their process fluids and improve processes to achieve greater levels of efficiency.
QH Fluid Intelligence™ provides real-time monitoring and control of fluid performance and cost, delivering fast, accurate, and actionable insights. Customizable, scalable, and easily integrated into manufacturing operations, the solution helps manufacturers drive down waste, mitigate risk, and reduce total cost of ownership.
The platform combines four key elements: Quaker Houghton’s world-class fluids, application expertise, hardware, and software.
Specific to hardware, the QH Fluidmonitor™ family of products incorporates proprietary sensor technologies to provide automatic measurement of key fluid and process parameters as well as real-time, cloud-connected data reports. Combining this readily available data about fluid tempera-ture, concentration, pH, conductivity, flow, and pressure, QH Fluidcontrol™ automated control technologies then provide automatic dosing and top-ups to keep fluids within the specified control limits.
For manufacturers, this reduces manual sampling, analysis, and top-ups and improves efficiency by eliminating the turnaround time associated with laboratory analysis of samples.
These hardware families work in tandem with the third element, QH Fluidtrend™ – an intuitive, user-friendly software for viewing the real-time and historical data and analytics, as well as alerting manufacturers to potential problems. QH Fluidtrend also offers insights on how to optimize fluids and processes to enhance tool life and the predictability of outcomes. Here, manufacturers can benefit from increased fluid life and reduced consumption which helps to deliver cost savings and reduce downtime, alongside improved manufacturing quality and health and safety.
Lastly, these technologies combine with Quaker Houghton’s unparalleled knowledge of process fluids, which is on hand to manufacturers around the clock. With more than 30 research and devel-opment centers across the globe, more than 400 dedicated team members support manufacturers in overcoming their process fluid challenges across a multitude of sectors including metal and construction, transportation, energy, industrial, and consumer goods.
The benefits of QH Fluid Intelligence have already been proven worldwide, providing significant savings for major manufacturers to date. In its first year, one global automotive OEM saved $1.25M by eliminating downtime, improving production rates, and reducing waste. The manufacturer also reported an approximate $90K annual decrease in lubricant costs and a reduction in consumption by 27 percent per unit. Meanwhile, another OEM reported a reduced total cost of ownership by $300K annually, improved productivity, and reduced downtime by 75 percent.
“Historically, the optimization of process fluids has been an afterthought for many manufacturers,” said Dave Slinkman, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Quaker Houghton. “The guesswork that’s traditionally involved in managing fluids manually is perilous for efficiency due to the negative impact it can have on the life of tooling and consumables, as well the risks it poses to increasing rejects and waste.
“Our new QH Fluid Intelligence solution provides manufacturers across many sectors with the meaningful data, automated control hardware, and dedicated support they need to increase productivity and reduce total cost of ownership. This insight can empower manufacturers to improve their fluid management processes, identify where unnecessary costs are being created, as well as identifying drags on productivity.”
