Stopping Repeat Motor Failures: Lessons from a Plant Maintenance Team
At Intelliware, we often work alongside maintenance managers who share the realities of keeping equipment running day after day. Recently, one of our client’s teams faced a frustrating problem: motors were failing despite having relays and timers installed.
On paper, everything seemed fine. Protection devices were in place. Yet, two motors failed within six months, causing downtime and repair costs. The maintenance manager told us:
“We had overload and undervoltage relays. Still, failures kept happening. It looked like bad luck, but we suspected something was missing in our approach.”
Here’s how his team tackled the challenge — and what other maintenance and procurement teams can learn from it
The Challenge
- Motors installed: Multiple 15 kW units running critical processes.
- Protection available: Overcurrent relays, undervoltage relays, and basic timers.
- The problem: Two motors failed in less than six months.
- The impact:
- Production stoppages and backlogs
- Emergency procurement of spares
- Rewinding costs adding up
- Management pressure on the maintenance team
Despite having “standard protection,” failures weren’t avoided.
What the Team Discovered
The protection devices did their job — but only reactively.
- Relays trip only after a threshold is crossed. By then, winding insulation may already be damaged.
- No continuous monitoring existed. Small current imbalances, gradual overloads, or recurring undervoltage dips went unnoticed.
- Leakage wasn’t being trended. When an insulation fault occurred, the relay acted, but the team couldn’t trace whether it was moisture, cable degradation, or something else.
The maintenance manager summed it up:
“Protection stopped the motor, but it didn’t tell us why the problem was happening in the first place.”
The Solution Implemented
The client’s team decided to add a monitoring layer on top of their protection setup. Intelliware supported them in sourcing the right devices and planning integration.
Here’s what was done:
- Current Transformers (CTs) + Digital Meters → Installed on critical motors for continuous load visibility.
- Earth Leakage Relays → Added with adjustable sensitivity to detect insulation faults early.
- Timers with restart sequencing → Ensured motors didn’t restart instantly after voltage dips.
- Power Quality Meters with data logging → Helped record undervoltage events and harmonics.
This combination provided both:
Results Achieved
Within months of implementing the layered approach:
- A phase imbalance was caught early on one motor — corrected before failure.
- Logged undervoltage events justified procurement of a stabilizer, preventing nuisance trips in PLCs and VFDs.
- Zero motor burnouts were reported in the following 6 months.
- Maintenance team shifted from firefighting to preventive planning.
Engagement with Procurement Team
For the procurement team, the starting point was clear: follow the technical directives and recommendations laid down by the maintenance department. But their responsibility didn’t end there. They had to validate these choices by comparing equivalent products and brands, ensuring commercial justification, and aligning with budget approvals.
During this process, they engaged with us at Intelliware to understand the landscape of available options. Together, we discussed which products met the specifications, where the trade-offs lay, and why the proposed brand stood out for reliability and long-term support.
Key aspects of the procurement involvement were:
- Following directives: Taking the maintenance team’s recommendations as the baseline.
- Evaluating alternatives: Comparing competitive products and brands that matched the specifications.
- Ensuring commercial fit: Checking budgets, vendor credibility, and approval requirements.
- Collaborating with Intelliware: Understanding the options, clarifying trade-offs, and aligning on the best choice.
- Reaching common ground: Finalizing a solution jointly with the maintenance team — technical confidence plus commercial comfort.
In the end, procurement and maintenance reached a common ground — one side confident about technical performance, the other satisfied about sourcing and commercial fit. The solution was finalized not in isolation, but as a collective decision backed by both teams.
Conclusion
This client’s experience highlighted a common industry reality:
- Protection alone is blind.
- Monitoring alone is powerless.
- Together, they deliver reliability.
By aligning procurement and maintenance needs, the team built a resilient motor protection strategy that cut failures to zero and gave management confidence in system reliability.
At Intelliware, we see our role as an enabler — helping teams connect the right solutions with their real-world challenges.