[HN Gopher] Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) - Real-time system to...
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Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) - Real-time system to manage
industrial greasing
We are Steve, Tim and Pete, the cofounders of GreaseBoss
(https://www.greaseboss.io). GreaseBoss is a hardware and software
system that verifies that the greasing of industrial equipment is
completed on time and according to specification. Greasing, you
say? Yup, you heard that right. Incorrect greasing is the number
one cause for machinery failure on industrial sites. Industrial
machinery failure costs the global economy $21B a year. Greasing is
a big deal! We know this is an unsexy part of the economy, so we
won't judge you if you have never heard of a zerk (grease point)
before. Some of our favourite places you can find zerks include
super yachts - 200 zerks, private planes - 80 zerks, breweries -
2000 zerks, theme parks - 1500 zerks. Other places with lots of
zerks include factories, mines, utilities, farm equipment, trucks
and military vehicles. The idea for GreaseBoss came when Steve and
Tim saw frequent machine breakdowns due to incorrect greasing while
supporting mine sites in Outback Australia. This problem costs
Australian mine sites hundreds of millions of dollars in lost
productivity every year - disrupted production, spending on parts
and labour for repairs. We built and tested our prototypes during
the pandemic lockdowns on the back deck, over Zoom calls. We have
now developed our MVP and have quit our jobs to chase GreaseBoss
full time. On the hardware side: we put RFID tags that fit like
washers under each zerk. These are read by a head unit that is
retrofittable to existing grease guns, which includes a custom RFID
reader integrated into the nozzle. It also includes a flow meter
and supporting electronics. Our device has 4G, Wifi and LoRa for
comms, but also operates in an offline mode for customers in remote
locations. Our hardware is rugged, dust proof, and water proof for
some of the toughest operational environments (and operators..) On
the software side, we record each greasing in the cloud, right as
the worker greases the zerk. Since most industry is still tracking
this using paperwork, you can imagine how much more efficient this
is. Our customers get back to production much faster. We are
building a HaaS (Hardware as a Service - is that a thing?) business
model: we charge customers upfront for the hardware and then a
software subscription fee. We are experimenting with per zerk, per
machine and per site pricing. We haven't found the sweet spot yet.
We have GreaseBoss installed at a large coal mine, a quarry and on
excavators at the dump in Queensland, Australia. We also have a
South African greasing contractor using our system. We will be
online for the rest of the day answering your questions (we are in
AEST timezone). We are very excited to receive your ideas,
experiences and feedback!
Author : SteveGreaseBoss
Score : 127 points
Date : 2021-02-23 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
| tcpekin wrote:
| What a cool problem to work on - would have never have thought of
| it. What is the approx. hardware cost?
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| CUrrent state is $2500 - we have not started manufacturing on
| volume, we are currently hand assembled
|
| We can get this much lower.
| oakwhiz wrote:
| Interesting concept - I have heard of grease "dose" devices
| before, AvE on YouTube takes one apart in this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydhndNX_8KI
|
| It's effectively an unattended, disposable piston that uses an
| electronic timer to periodically generate gases to push the
| grease out. Everything is calibrated so that it dispenses
| approximately the right amount over the right time period. For
| machines that can use one of these, I wonder if there is room for
| integration with the GreaseBoss RFID tags and tracking system.
| timhall99 wrote:
| Yes, these auto lubricators are widespread and a competitor to
| our current product. That being said, these auto lubricator do
| have their downsides and our customers have been very open
| about these. One of our customers is using GreaseBoss to
| replace auto lubricators as it gives much better control over
| the greasing. Additionally, we do have a second product in
| development that works with auto lubricators to overcome some
| of the core issues that our customers are experiencing with
| them.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > We are building a HaaS (Hardware as a Service - is that a
| thing?) business model: we charge customers upfront for the
| hardware and then a software subscription fee.
|
| Oh god. The rest sounds great, but this sounds like the worst of
| renting and owning combined.
|
| How do your customers react to this model? Can the devices be
| used without the subscription?
| woah wrote:
| I mean, they have to sell them the hardware. Then software
| needs to be run and continuously updated. I would probably
| prefer a subscription to a large up front charge for ongoing
| software maintenance, or having to gamble that a "free" cloud
| service stays online
| solarkraft wrote:
| Good point. I'd just worry about my device being bricked
| should they hypothetically go out of business (see other IoT
| stories). Great, I wouldn't be paying for the software
| updates anymore, but the device _I own_ would be entirely
| useless. There 's nothing wrong with offering a self-hosting
| version either, arguably it would be preferable.
|
| I'm applying my personal values here, of course. In practice
| there will probably be contractual agreements to provide the
| service for some number of years.
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| We have a self hosted version of the system available, we
| have found that attitudes to data security and location are
| changing. Customers want to have it in house to the extent
| possible.
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| this is a good point, I mentioned that we are exploring the
| business model now.
|
| One benefit of the current model is that we expect lots of
| improvements in the hardware over coming months. We are rolling
| these out to our early adopter customers as they become
| available at no cost.
|
| There is room for more creativity when it comes to the model
| twic wrote:
| Are you competing with equipment manufacturers at all? I worked
| with one big manufacturer briefly, and they were cramming
| telemetry and electronics into everything they could, so they
| could provide this kind of cloud-based preventative maintenance
| service (although i never heard anything specific about grease).
| Is there a chance you eventually won't be able to sell because
| machines already come with grease intelligence built in?
| timhall99 wrote:
| Hi Twic, Yes, we are aware that big manufacturers are starting
| to roll out lots of telemetry into their equipment. i've only
| seen the greasing angle addressed by manufacturers on mobile
| equipment (bulldozers etc) The problem with these platforms is
| that they are designed to encourage lock in. Lets face it, most
| customers don't buy one type of equipment for their entire
| plant. With many different brand specific platforms, it may not
| be palatable for customers. Our strategy is to be light,
| retrofittable, simple and easily integrated into customer's
| larger management systems (like SAP)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| This seems likely to have a good overlap with safety procedures.
| As such integration with the big bads in this space would be a
| nice box to tick - i think the term to google is EHSQ - the only
| one I know of is intelex. Might be worth looking at.
|
| Overall, I love the rfid two-step idea - it's simple and
| brilliant. Good luck ! :-)
| timhall99 wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, i've been speaking to some guys in the oil and gas
| sector and one of them told me that greasing valves in that
| environment is a process safety concern as the grease assists
| the valve to seal and prevent gas leaks. We will definitely
| play the safety angle with these types of industries. Thanks
| for the feedback
| grawprog wrote:
| >On the hardware side: we put RFID tags that fit like washers
| under each zerk. These are read by a head unit that is
| retrofittable to existing grease guns, which includes a custom
| RFID reader integrated into the nozzle. It also includes a flow
| meter and supporting electronics. Our device has 4G, Wifi and
| LoRa for comms, but also operates in an offline mode for
| customers in remote locations. Our hardware is rugged, dust
| proof, and water proof for some of the toughest operational
| environments (and operators..)
|
| Sounds expensive, grease zerk's are cheap, and easily
| replaceable, these sound expensive and likely just as prone to
| failure as a simple one.
|
| >On the software side, we record each greasing in the cloud,
| right as the worker greases the zerk. Since most industry is
| still tracking this using paperwork, you can imagine how much
| more efficient this is. Our customers get back to production much
| faster.
|
| This sounds like an over engineered, expensive version of a
| maintenance schedule. It's a management problem if they're not
| scheduling maintenance.
|
| Workers are still stopping to grease machines, they're still
| using the same amount of grease, greasing the same spots at the
| same scheduled times. Tracking this by cloud adds nothing really
| from what I can tell.
|
| This whole system would have driven me nuts when I was working
| machines doing biweekly greasing and maintenance.
|
| It would have been just one more thing to worry about inside the
| machines and believe me, every little thing inside a machine that
| can go wrong, will go wrong at some point.
|
| A couple of the machines had a few parts that were greased by a
| computer controlled auto greaser, it was always prone to trouble
| and needed to be adjusted frequently.
|
| As you say yourself also, greasing maintenance is incredibly
| important to avoid downtime and machine damage, why should a
| company rely on your third party cloud for this?
|
| What guarantee is there of its continued support and existence?
|
| What happens if there's internet outages?
|
| How does having a third party between me and the maintenance of
| my machines benefit me?
| timhall99 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. In answer to your comments: Each tag
| that is fit under the zerk is small and cheap, installed just
| like a washer. They cost about $2.50 USD and once fitted,
| should last a long time. The expensive equipment is located in
| the head unit, which attaches to a grease gun. So, most sites
| will only need a handful of these.
|
| On the software side, the system uses the customer's existing
| maintenance schedule. The problem that it is solving there is
| that paper based work orders don't track tasks down to a per
| zerk basis. At a huge refinery we visited, the lube tech had
| one work order that they would do all week and close off on a
| Friday afternoon. There is no way that systems like these can
| verify that each machine has been correctly greased. In your
| situation, performing bi-weekly grease runs, the system would
| be setup to schedule all of your greasing on the nominated days
| of the grease run and would indicate the required grease volume
| for each zerk as you went through the rounds to make sure the
| correct volume is applied. If at the end of the day, you missed
| one zerk (lets face it, we are all humans here) the system
| would let you know that it was missed so you could ensure it
| gets greased.
|
| We don't want to be a third party between a customer and their
| machines. simply a tool that supports the customer to verify
| that their machines are being correctly maintained.
| umvi wrote:
| > Workers are still stopping to grease machines, they're still
| using the same amount of grease, greasing the same spots at the
| same scheduled times. Tracking this by cloud adds nothing
| really from what I can tell.
|
| Except apparently they aren't if the initial claim is to be
| believed (that $21B of industrial failure is caused by
| incorrect greasing). If you integrate tracking hardware on a
| per-zerk basis, you can easily tell if a worker missed a zerk,
| etc.
| grawprog wrote:
| Well, for a fraction of the price, one could hire a person
| who's job it is solely to inspect and keep track of
| maintenance, it's pretty visually obvious when a zerk hasn't
| been recently greased.
|
| Seems a lot cheaper than retrofitting my machines and
| greaseguns at my expense and paying for ongoing service for a
| company I have zero reason to trust will even exist in a
| year.
| timhall99 wrote:
| I understand your concerns. We are running trials with
| numerous companies (large and small) right now so that we
| can develop case studies to understand and communicate the
| ROI of the system.
|
| The pricing of GreaseBoss is positioned to be less than the
| cost of having a full-time hire looking after the greasing
| alone (based on Western country pay scales).
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Our main compeittors are to do nothing and hire a
| specialist.
|
| It turns out there is a whole dicipline of lubrication
| specialists called Tribologists - they have an association
| and chapters in many industrial cities.
|
| Many operations have a target to reduce head count - aside
| from the salary cost, the logic is that people cannot get
| hurt if they are not on site. We have seen many cases
| hiring a specialist cannot be justified on both cost and
| safety.
|
| As the maitenance workforce is reduced, the same level of
| performance is required. GreaseBoss is positioning so that
| anyone on site can pick up the tool, know what to do and
| then do the greasing. This way site can maintain the same
| maintenance performance, without increasing head count or
| putting additional people in the plant.
| timhall99 wrote:
| Yes, precisely. In many industries, like mining, when a piece
| of equipment fails a root cause analysis is performed to
| identify the reason for failure. Incorrect greasing is a huge
| contributor to this. One of the world's largest bearing
| suppliers (SKF) note that over 36% of bearing failures is due
| to incorrect greasing "wrong lubricant, wrong quantity, wrong
| lubrication interval" (source link is below)
|
| Tracking the completion of lubrication is the only way to
| verify that the equipment is actually being correctly
| maintained.
|
| https://www.skf.com/binaries/pub12/Images/0901d1968064c148-B.
| ..
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Thanks for taking to time to raise your concerns, these are all
| legitimate questions that have been raised by our customers
| during our sales process
|
| Our your second point - the problem we are solving is human
| error and principal/agent problem, which can be addressed by
| management controls. We have seen the management controls fail
| when there varying skill and experience levels in the
| maitenance crew, when the operation has a transient workforce
| (say contractors at a harvest) or when the records are
| falsified. Falsification of records is principal agent - the
| person responsible for greasing doesn't wear the cost of
| downtime, labour and spares to fix it.
|
| GreaseBoss can be used to eliminate all of these factors -
| customers who buy it may be a gold mine in PNG, or a potato
| farm in Victoria, a smelter in India. These types of operations
| have minmimal management controls compared to a modern
| developed world operation. As with everything, GreaseBoss has a
| sweet spot in the ecomony and it may not be where you have
| previously worked.
|
| On your second point - we added a computer to a grease gun...
| that runs the risk of over complicating a simple tool, let
| alone an RFID on a zerk. We have worked really hard to make our
| system simple - we know our users are not going to tolerate a
| screen freeze, syncing errors etc - its not perfect now, but
| its on the trajectory. We have built our system with minmial
| impact to completing the current task, the only change is that
| you have to charge the unit at night. The only input interface
| is the RFID (no buttons) and the output on the screen. We want
| our users to pick it up and it just works.
|
| With regards to the final comments, we have a version of the
| system that can be deployed locally - therefore no risk of
| losing data, bricking the device. The system works entirely
| offline, it only needs to sync once - provided the schedule
| never changes. And the third party can guide you around the
| plant, tell you how much grease and when its required, if you
| have a day off it can ensure the greasing is completed to the
| same standard as you would.
|
| I hope this answwers your quesitons - thanks for making me work
| hard :)
| grawprog wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to answer, sorry for coming across
| bluntly, but it is a pretty big sell. I appreciate you taking
| the time to address those points and yours and the above
| commenter did clarify things.
|
| In industries relying on large machines, there's always
| companies promising their tools or their parts or their
| systems will increase profits and efficiency etc.
|
| In many cases i've seen, the benefits end up being marginal,
| while complexity in the current systems are increased.
|
| They end up bringing their own maintenance challenges and
| other unexpected challenges.
|
| Availability of proprietary attachments and parts was always
| a big issue. We'd be at the whims of the sole provider as far
| as availability, pricing and delivery time went. This factors
| in to the amount of downtime when inevitable down time
| occurs.
|
| There's a big difference between waiting a week for your
| fancy proprietary doodad to show up than sending someone to
| the hardware store.
|
| Every external proprietary system you add to your current
| system is another layer of 'things' that comes with it's own
| problems eventually.
|
| My questions aren't so much about how much money this will
| save from down times, but how much extra money will it cost
| when inevitable problems do occur with it.
|
| Is it going to cost more in the long run than current human
| error does?
|
| What i've noticed a lot of these systems actually do isn't
| reduce losses or increase profits, it just hides the losses
| further down the road.
|
| From what I can tell, this system would be applied to
| hundreds of individual grease zerks across an entire
| industry, requiring likely at least a dozen or more of your
| proprietary ends.
|
| Now, we're reliant not only on every one of those zerks
| functioning properly always, but we're limited in the amount
| of greasegun's we can actually deploy.
|
| As the other commenter said, the greasegun attachments are
| expensive. They're going to be used a lot, everything that's
| used a lot wears down. Hell, normal greaseguns die pretty
| regularly.
|
| This is now a new expensive part that the company will have
| to rely on to perform basic maintenance, which itself will
| need either maintainance or replacement at some point.
|
| At which point, the company's waiting for their delivery
| instead of just going to buy a new greasegun.
|
| On gun down means a loss of a person's worth of greasing
| until it's replaced. That's time and money lost there on top
| of the cost of replacement.
|
| A zerk down means no data from that one until it's replaced
| meaning it's back to human error again.
|
| I appreciate your zerks and attachments may be built
| ruggedly, but everything in a machine is prone to wear and
| breakage and eventually, they will bring maintenance issues.
|
| What are the extra costs this will bring on top of initial
| and other ongoing service costs?
|
| Are they low enough to actually save money in the long run?
|
| 5-10 years down the road?
|
| These aren't tech startups with ephemeral existences, these
| machines will need to be relied on for years are you offering
| that kind of reliability?
|
| A decade from now, will I still be able to buy your
| proprietary attachments and your zerks?
| jcims wrote:
| BeltBuddy, GaugeMage, Filterly, etc etc. All sorts of growth
| potential lol
| koski_pindora wrote:
| Hi, we (pindora.fi) have been doing HaaS now for some months and
| in my short and narrow experience at least it is not easy to have
| hardware upfront cost and then software subscription fee for
| _something new_ people have net learned to pay yet.
|
| What if you would try to have "setup fee" and then "subscription
| fee"? Could that work?
|
| Same thing, named differently :-)
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| great idea, we are experiencing the same type of friction from
| our customers. We think we need to get it to something similar
| to cell phone contract from the 90's - $0 upfront, $X per month
| for 2 years
| whalesalad wrote:
| Never in my life did I think I would see the intersection of a
| zerk fitting and cloud computing.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| If I had a use case, I'd consider them just to be able to
| mention the "GreaseCloud" at serious meetings.
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Our metric for our investor deck is NUM: Nipples under
| Management
|
| Zerks are called Grease Nipples in Australia ;)
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| ha ha, we have had some interesting experiences explaining at
| pitch events and to investors.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| What kind of customer lock-in do you have? Is the API/data format
| open or closed? Can I easily export my data?
|
| As a customer, I'd be concerned about longevity and data loss
| if/when you go away or pivot. Knowing that I could export my
| data, and re-implement my own backend using your open data
| standard if needed, would go a long way to easing my concerns.
|
| Most customers won't go through the effort to build their own
| solution, and for those few that do you can easily out-perform
| with service, experience, and expertise.
|
| You could even offer bespoke integration services...
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, I think you are raising a valid point
|
| We have built the platform with APIs in anticipaction of
| integrations with SAP, Pronto, etc. We have also built in
| functionality to export data out to CSV files. Our market is a
| mix of big corporates who want the integration with SAP and
| never want to see out platform and small guys who run their
| maintenance from checklists and like the platform.
|
| In regards to customer lock in, the system requires physical
| tags to be fitted to the zerks. Fitting the tags costs man-
| hours and they only work with our head unit. We think this
| protects us in the short term, longer term the capture, hosting
| and reporting on the data is our lock in.
|
| Our customers are not the types to go out and build their own
| software - they may copy the head unit though..
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Anything unique about the head unit you could patent?
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| We have patents on the head unit and the whole system
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Tremendous. Best wishes and much success.
| lookdangerous wrote:
| On this note, have you explored integrating your
| hardware/software into customer systems? I suppose customers
| may have existing logging applications they feed said paper
| forms into, and if you could feed that directly it would be
| useful.
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| The system has APIs, anticipating integration into maitenance
| platforms like SAP, Pronto etc. We haven't needed to do it
| yet, but our customers ask us every time.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Very cool! I just passed this along to our preventative
| maintenance manager at our production facility.
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| awesome thanks. we would love their feedback
| timhall99 wrote:
| Thanks Steve, We really appreciate your support
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| This may be due to my complete clueless-ness, but all these
| fittings look the same?
|
| https://www.greaseboss.io/our-product
|
| It looks like you're trying to list a variety of different
| fitting but copied the same image multiple times.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| That's a simulated picture of the panel on the machine where
| all the grease lines come together for easy access.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| Aha, thanks! Probably obvious to an actual tech :)
| cashsterling wrote:
| Applying the wrong grease is also a big problem. At one facility
| I worked at, we had about 15-20 difference greases for different
| equipment in our facility. We did a lot of training on the topic
| of grease selection and importance of not screwing this up... yet
| some techs still got it wrong from time to time. With some grease
| combos, you do not have long to catch the mistake before bearing
| damage, or even failure, occurs.
|
| This is a good idea. So your system verifies that the right
| grease gun, with correct grease, is used on the correct port?
| timhall99 wrote:
| Hi Cash, Yes, our system ensures that the correct grease is
| used and that the correct amount is applied at the right time.
|
| I heard a story from a nearby power plant the other day of the
| incorrect grease being applied to a bearing. The two mismatched
| greases reacted poorly and turned to a wax inside the bearing.
| Needless to say, the bearing failed catastrophically very soon
| after. Our system not only tracks the grease type digitally,
| but we also have colour coding on our tags and head units to
| help humans easily match colours to ensure they have the right
| grease in the gun too.
|
| Cheers
| arjunvpaul wrote:
| Awesome! HaaS is a thing. You just made it one.
|
| Regarding the business model: You ever thought of a Franchise
| model? Perhaps train a few folks (perhaps folks who were
| incorrectly greasing before) who can then take contracts for the
| large job sites?
|
| I have seen this practice with diamond coring machines of
| companies like Hilti in markets like Dubai (building contractors
| don't need the machine , they just need the holes they cut and
| they don't need it everyday) where folks but the coring machines
| and then charge per hole (per Zerk in your case) and Hilti
| provides training to them.
|
| Regarding the segment: If incorrect greasing leads to machinery
| failure, then perhaps look at operations where machine failure
| can be mission critical. Sites like Baffin Island, where large
| contractors' maintenance plan is "buy 10 of each machine" If one
| breaks down, they just park it and put the next one into service.
| OR Offshore Platforms where downtime can mean several millions
| down the pipe. Example projects offshore in Guyana where
| replacements are not available onshore too.
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Great feedback.
|
| We are exploring the franchise model, one of our customers has
| a contract to manage the greasing for 18k zerks at a number of
| different sites. They want GreaseBoss to drive their manaul
| greasing business, they can reduce head count and reduce admin
| overhead.
|
| I used to go to Papua New Guinean gold mines and the use case
| of not being able to get a spare part for months is very real.
| These are the early adoptor operations we are targeting
| samstave wrote:
| Modern day [public transport could use this in spaeds for
| morethan just greasing...
|
| If you have maintenance RFIDs that alert to when action
| should be tacken BEFORE it has to be taken - you will instill
| confidence and reliabilaty into whatever system.
|
| It would be wonderful if you open source access to your data
| regarding the frequency of maint to a vector of injuries/job
| loss/production downtime etc...
|
| And provide the definitive source for how effective such a
| product is in whatever market.
|
| The RFID gasket thingy you describe might well revolutionize
| the automotive market in general - but I would suggest
| focusing on getting those bitches into the giant CAT mining
| dumps post haste - heck, they spend $70,000 on a single tyre
| - so getting that readout on an engine might be bank.
| __sy__ wrote:
| Second that. HaaS is totally a thing in enterprise hardware,
| and I'd argue it's the one business model in hardware that sort
| of keeps everyone aligned!
|
| For example, the recurring revenue gives the OEM incentives to
| continue supporting the platform. Meanwhile, the lower upfront
| cost for the hardware lowers switching cost for the customer in
| case there's a better solution out there.
|
| OK, obviously there's a big gap between this theory and
| reality, but just thought that I'd point it out :)
|
| Congrats on launching!
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I love this. Good luck to the team. Unsexy opportunities are
| usually among the best ones to tackle.
|
| Edit: do you know of a company called Entytle [0]? Might be an
| interesting partner for what you're trying to do. (I don't
| personally know them, and have no affiliation)
|
| [0]: https://www.entytle.com/
| tylerben wrote:
| Loved reading this! What part of your product has received the
| most traction/excitement from customers? The hardware or the
| software/reporting piece?
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Our customers like the visibility the software brings to their
| operation. They keep inventing uses for the data we hadn't
| thought of - we had a customer who owns an intermittantly used
| shiploader request a report showing the last greasing of each
| zerk to be outputted 2 hours before the ship arrives in port,
| this is so they can prevent unforseen breakdowns while the
| shiploader is in operation and the costs are high
|
| We still have a few iteration cycles on the hardware ahead of
| us - reducing size and weight and improving form factor.
| tylerben wrote:
| Interesting insights, thanks for taking the time to reply!
| Always interested in this kind of stuff after working in the
| water resources field on the software side of things. We pull
| in data from telemetered data loggers (like Sutron -
| https://www.sutron.com/) and then create data driven maps and
| dashboards on top of it. Cool to see you guys operating both
| in the hardware and software space.
| timhall99 wrote:
| Thanks Tyler. Your line of work seems interesting. We are
| probably not there just yet but in 6 months or so, it would
| be interesting to see how we could extract more value out
| of the data we're receiving. What is the name of your
| company?
| tylerben wrote:
| Used to work for LRE Water (https://lrewater.com/).
| Currently working for Stae (https://stae.co/) doing
| similar things but at a much larger scale. Freelance as
| well (https://www.lostcreekdesigns.co/).
| timhall99 wrote:
| Awesome Tyler! I'll keep note of your freelance page for
| reference later.
|
| Cheers
| turnerc wrote:
| Congrats on the launch looks like a solid and interesting
| product, Is there other hardware besides the head unit and RFID
| tags that I would need to make accommodations for? Most of the
| sites I visit barely have cellular reception.
|
| Can the head unit be used without the RFID tags, for example in
| an environment where re-fitting a zerk can take place on the next
| maintenance window?
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Thanks, at this stage we have no other hardware. We are piggy
| backing off plant wifi or 4G. We have explored getting our own
| network gateway so we can bypass corporate networks.
|
| The system can work offline, record the data in the unit and
| then sync when it comes back into range. Our use case is
| working all day in the plant, then coming back to the workshop
| for charging and syncing data at night
|
| The head unit records all greasing, even without a tag, but its
| up the user to log in and map them to the correct nipple
| jeffrallen wrote:
| So here's a question: if a company was suffering below average
| equipment downtime from lube problems, because they had somehow
| managed to have above average compliance to manufacturer's specs,
| would your sales pitch still work? Because as they said on
| Prairie Home Companion, "all our children are above average". No
| one thinks they have incompetent maintenance teams.
|
| There are industries where safety risks make lube happen
| correctly. Are they still in your addressable market?
|
| Good luck!
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| great question and good logic.
|
| Many sites are reducing headcount in maintenance due to high
| labour costs, greasing is one of those things that can be
| neglected. Our pitch is to do more maintenance with less head
| count, with GreaseBoss anyone can pick up the grease gun and be
| directed what to do, with no prior trianing.
|
| Further down the track, we want GreaseBoss to power robotic
| greasing. But to get to this nirvana, you need to start with
| manual
| timhall99 wrote:
| Hi Jeff, Also on your comment, what we've seen on a number of
| sites is that they do have a good maintenance team but
| sometimes jobs just get missed. If there is a series of
| equipment failures that draw the team's attention towards
| urgent repair work, of course the greasing is not going to get
| done. Those sites see the benefit of then having the system
| there to flag the greasing that was missed so that they can be
| completed once the urgent repairs have been completed - or at
| least ensure the critical equipment is greased.
| jbob2000 wrote:
| I pursued something similar. The challenge you may face is that
| the act of regular inspections, maintaining the RFID tags, and
| paying for the service may cost more than doing a poor job of
| grease maintenance. The alternative is just simply doing regular
| rounds with a grease bucket.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Or running machines to destruction and taking the downtime
| costs (which the dysfunctional organisation has already built
| into their business model, since they cannot get their
| employees to grade then right).
|
| I agree that there's a danger that this is easier to justify on
| Powerpoint than down in the dust and mud of real life
| industrial financials. (Pretty sure that gold mines do not stay
| open when the price of gold is too low to be able to pay for
| forgotten grease on conveyors.)
|
| Source: countless posts on /r/skookum referring to idiot
| management that runs machines to destruction then drives
| maintenance teams to work overtime to stop the "unplanned"
| downtime.
| [deleted]
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| I like your comment about this being easier to justify on a
| PPT than in the dirt - we are on the road every day
| experiencing this reality. We are making progress, customers
| are buying it for more than just the greasing - they have
| transient workforces who take care of the equipment
| differently and want consistantly . Some of them use greasing
| as an indicator "if they can't do the greasing, what else
| arn't they doing?" another guy got rid of 4 guys over 12
| months for not completing the greasing, so he is saving on
| recruitment costs, there are many others..
| ahstilde wrote:
| It's really interesting to see what IoT is becoming in reality
| versus the hype from 5 years go.
|
| I guess the industrial cloud is actually a thing.
|
| I'd love to see a teardown of one of your grease guns and how you
| keep the delicate components safe.
| timhall99 wrote:
| Haha yes, the industrial cloud is definitely a thing..
|
| We faced challenges with getting such a system to be "industry
| ready" on the shoestring budget that we started with and hence
| our very first prototype that went into industry trials failed
| early. Our later version has taken on board all of the
| learnings from these first failures as well as a bit more
| budget. The system uses engineering plastics (like acetal and
| polycarbonate) as well as high quality, off the shelf
| industrial products. That being said we have another 2 or so
| product iterations planned to continue to ruggedise the system
| further. Our customers on these sites can be very rough on the
| tools.
| lookdangerous wrote:
| Very cool concept. I imagine there are countless similar avenues
| for automation of otherwise-paper-based maintenance management.
| dsugarman wrote:
| Congrats on the launch and excellent writeup, I learned something
| new today!
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| cheers, its one of those things that you would never imagine is
| still a problem
| xupybd wrote:
| I'm currently trying to track down simple software to monitor
| our machine maintenance. Most of the products are either way
| to complex or far too much work to enter the data. So paper
| records become the best solution. Low cost, low complexity,
| and agile.
|
| Your system looks amazing and solves the complexity and data
| entry problem. I wish it was just grease we need to track.
| [deleted]
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| thanks.
|
| We saw early on that if we were going to add a computer to
| grease gun, it had to be very simple and never crash or
| lose connection. Our operators have zero tolerance for
| complexity.
|
| What are you trying to track?
| xupybd wrote:
| We cut at a saw, then edge at an edge bander, after that
| we drill and mill on a CNC. The saw has blades that need
| changing. The edge bander has cleaning cycles that have
| to be run. The CNCs have drills to be changed, milling
| tools that need sharpening, vacuum pumps that need
| filters cleaned, and sacrificial beds need surfacing.
|
| Those are all the regular tasks but each machine has
| maintenance tasks that each have different periods. Such
| as the vacuum pumps need veins changed every six months.
|
| Oh, and general plant machinery like forklifts and
| vehicles all need regular servicing.
|
| We want a system that throws up alerts when maintenance
| doesn't happen. So we are not replying on people to
| remember or check maintenance books. People leave and the
| organisation forgets all the irregular tasks they did.
|
| The plant needs its own nervous system to tell us it's
| not well. Else we run until failure and have unexpected
| downtime.
| timhall99 wrote:
| That is so true about a plant needing its own nervous
| system.
|
| It would be great to speak to you further on this to get
| your thoughts on what implementation style would work
| best.
|
| my email is tim@greaseboss.com.au if you're open for a
| chat
| ayewo wrote:
| Echoing the parent, your intro is very well written.
|
| I'm surprised I read till the end, even though I had no clue
| about zerks, until I read your launch post.
| seany wrote:
| I've used several battery powered grease guns. Some of them
| already have "measured output" modes. Have you looked into
| integration with those types of tools to automatically deliver
| the right amount to the serialized zerk?
|
| Heavy industry is where things made of steel plate die hard
| deaths. How have you hardened your electronics? What's the price
| point owning the "system" when realized into a annual TCOO
| assuming a certain amount of tool breakage?
| timhall99 wrote:
| Hi Sean, Yes, we have a Milwaukee grease gun with the measured
| output. What our system has shown is that their "measurement"
| is not perfectly accurate all the time.
|
| The biggest factor is the human performing the greasing
| remembering how much grease is required for each individual
| zerk and how often they require greasing. Reading the user
| manuals of some of this equipment shows that one machine might
| have 10 zerks that require 3 different volumes at 5 different
| greasing intervals. How can a maintenance operator be expected
| to remember all of that information for all equipment across
| the plant? Managing this data is the core value that GreaseBoss
| delivers to the maintenance operators.
| seany wrote:
| I think we're agreeing :) I was getting at the fact that full
| integration would be cool because then you both wouldn't need
| to remember, or even pay attention to setting it.
| timhall99 wrote:
| Ah right.. I see your angle. Yes, it is something that we
| have looked into. This is our first product into the space
| and we anticipate many iterations and many more to come ;)
| sigmaprimus wrote:
| My neighbor has been working full time in a sawmill for 40 years
| as an oiler, as well as greasing bushing and bearings, part of
| his job is filling oil resivoirs. This may be another industry
| that could benifit from your tech offerings.
| timhall99 wrote:
| Thanks Sigma, Yeah, this is not the first time that we've heard
| this.. Its another one thats on our product roadmap at the
| moment...
| petercondoleon wrote:
| Absolutely. We've been throwing ideas around for OilBoss,
| AirBoss, FuelBoss and ExplosiveBoss. Obviously we're going to
| to focus on getting GreaseBoss right first but there are some
| other very exciting problems out there to solve!
| xupybd wrote:
| Have you tried selling to the wood products manufacturing
| industry?
|
| Not as much money involved but companies like Borgs have sites
| all over and hundreds of machines that need greasing.
|
| Many of these machines have auto greasers, can you integrate with
| those to monitor if the grease is flowing?
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| I will check out Borgs, honestly they were not on my radar.
|
| The autoluber question comes up all the time, initially we are
| targeting the zerks/grease nipples that are too low value or
| physically cannot be fitted with an autoluber. We are also
| targeting autoluber refills.
|
| We have some specific autoluber products on our roadmap so we
| can have all greasing in our GreaseCloud
| alangibson wrote:
| Stuff like this could have incredible value, but be aware that
| you are up against once of the most powerful forces in the
| universe: people that don't give a shit.
|
| > The idea for GreaseBoss came when Steve and Tim saw frequent
| machine breakdowns
|
| Were you doing the dirty work, or were you watching from the
| office? Those RFID washers look a whole lot different to the guy
| with the wrench than they do to the guy with the keyboard.
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Great comments - people that manage people that don't give a
| shit are our target market. But point taken.
|
| I used to sell and commission equipment in the field, this
| meant visiting lots of sites and working in the service crews
| as a junior (getting tools, pumping grease, sweeping floors) to
| install and commission what was sold. I had a mix of field and
| office duties.
|
| You are right in saying our RFID tags are not as rugged as they
| could be, we are currently making them by hand, while we wait
| for our injection moulding tooling to be delivered
| alangibson wrote:
| My comment sounds a little anti-blue collar, so I should
| clarify what I'm getting at. I grew up with roughnecks in and
| around oil fields. I'm looking at this through their eyes.
|
| When they look at electronics, they see another thing about to
| break. These are guys that are used to dealing with industrial
| grade hydraulic systems and the like.
|
| They also feel like they know what needs to be done to get the
| job done, and they are highly uninterested in introducing
| another way for the boss to more efficiently hassle them.
|
| IMHO that means your biggest challenge is making fans out of
| the guys on the wrench through absolutely bulletproof
| reliability and convincing managers to not use it punitively.
| timhall99 wrote:
| Hi Alan, We've been working with people from both end of the
| spectrum (on the tools and in the office). I completely agree
| that the system may not have any appeal for the guys on the
| tools who don't give a shit. There are definitely plenty of
| them out there. What we have found that there are also plenty
| of guys on the tools that do care and do want to do a better
| job. They like the tool and want to do a better job.
|
| PS> we are already working on the next iteration of the product
| tag to make them more hardcore.
|
| Cheers
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Very cool! I work in industrial automation and deal with grease
| all the time. All my equipment is indoors; sometimes it feels
| like the cast iron foundries are some of the most hellish places
| on earth but I know your Outback mine sites will give them a run
| for that unenviable title!
|
| Most of the new equipment we build has automated grease
| dispensing systems, where my PLC dispenses a fixed amount of
| grease through hard-plumbed tubing onto ball screw nuts, linear
| rail trucks, bushings, slides, or whatever else the machine
| requires. Those don't need GreaseBoss fittings, but perhaps
| chould be able to tie into your cloud if they've got some of your
| equipment and some of mine.
|
| A lot of robotic equipment and repurposed older equipment,
| however, plus some new equipment with hard-to-plumb areas, has
| automatic greasing distance counters that pop up a warning/fault
| on the HMI that reads something to the effect of "Grease Warning:
| 20km travel on Z axis ballscrew, follow the greasing procedure
| and enter maintenance password to dismiss or OK to continue".
|
| Those, I suppose, could benefit from GreaseBoss in three ways:
| First, you could guarantee that the procedure was actually
| followed (that both the easy-to-access top nut and the buried
| bottom nut were greased). Second, you skip the maintenance
| password step by detecting the grease being applied. Third, you
| could dismiss/reset the warning automatically if my PLC could
| query your API to determine when the zerks on my machine were
| last greased.
|
| However, Haas is a machine builder, not a viable business model.
| A subscription to use the equipment is not going to fly with most
| of my customers. They're not stingy, CapEx is already huge and
| grease zerks are cheap compared to the engineering costs they're
| paying - you're putting in a $2.5M piece of equipment, they don't
| care if the optional RFID grease zerks are $0.25 or $2.50 or $250
| - but OpEx and equipment lifetime are critical. The idea that
| their equipment stops working because someone in the front office
| didn't pay a third party is anathema to them. They'd rather spend
| $250 per zerk once than $2.50 for the tag plus a yearly fee of
| $5/zerk for the 10-year lifetime of the equipment.
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Great feedback, cast iron foundaries are terrible places. I
| used to work at a foundary, the sand and the dust was terrible.
|
| We get feedback from customers all the time that they use auto-
| greasers, or their new equipment comes with auto greaser fitted
| standard. One issue we see is when they blend the new equipment
| with old equipment, they inevitably have a bunch of manual
| grease nipples that don't get managed and are forgotton about.
| There is also a class of nipples that are uneconomic or
| physically unable to have auto lubers.
|
| We are initially the neglected cohort of nipples as our target
| market, because they are the ones that fail the regularly. Our
| intention is to eventually get our system to cover integrate
| the Autolubers as well - we think it would be very valuable to
| have a single source of truth for greasing.
|
| You are right in saying that our customers prefer to buy on
| capex, we are still figuring out ways to satisfy this. The
| problem of missed greasing occurs every day, so it should be
| paid for everyday, however our customers don't quite see it
| this way..
| timhall99 wrote:
| Hi Leif, Haha i know what you mean in terms of the most hellish
| places on earth. Last month, we went 300m into an underground
| mine and that is not a place you want to be spending too much
| time.. haha
|
| Very interesting use case and yes, the GreaseBoss system would
| be perfect to talk into your PLC through API's to verify that
| zerks had been greased.
|
| Thanks also for the feedback on the business model (i like the
| comment "Haas is a machine builder, not a business model"). I
| agree that CAPEX expenditure for some companies is by far the
| easiest way to procure others are seeking OPEX as a way to
| manage cashflow. I think we need solid offerings for both
| models.
|
| What is the name of your company? It would be great to chat
| further.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Why so mnay zerks in breweries, more than in superyachts?
| timhall99 wrote:
| pumps to flow god's nectar through the pipes.. also conveyors
| and screw pumps to carry raw ingredients (barley, hops etc)
| from storage locations into the vat.
| baldeagle wrote:
| I wonder if you put enough sensors on the gun head, if you could
| map roughly where each zerg was in 3D space.... so if there was a
| set start point, a grease run could be conducted... in case not
| all points needed greasing up at the same time.
| petercondoleon wrote:
| Hi, awesome idea! Right now we've built in the ability for
| users to assign a preferred order to each zerk that is applied
| to the grease run. Obviously this isn't practical for users
| with lots of zerks (some of our customers have 1000s of zerks!)
| but being able to automate the ordering process using sensors
| sounds like a good feature. I like to think of it as the google
| maps of grease runs. In terms of mapping zerks in 3D space-
| check out 'digital twins', this is something we are keen to
| explore down the track.
| guynamedloren wrote:
| Brilliant concept and impressive execution. I saw you write in
| another comment thread "its one of those things that you would
| never imagine is still a problem."
|
| This was precisely my reaction. And then on the flip side, when
| you see a deceptively simple solution like GreaseBoss, it seems
| so obvious in hindsight. Well done!
|
| What's your tech stack? Are you looking to build out your
| software team?
| timhall99 wrote:
| Thanks. Yeah it can be a real eye opener when you step onto a
| large industrial site and once you get a look under the covers,
| see that the systems and processes around something so simple
| are in complete shambles. It appears that everyone is just too
| busy to take the time to fix them.. Our tech stack is being
| upgraded right as we speak.. The new system utilises
| micropython on the head units, AWS and Laravel. We currently
| have one great software developer (I'm sure he could answer
| your tech stack question a lot better haha) and yes, we are
| looking to build out our software team into the future.
|
| Thanks for your support.
| dkhenry wrote:
| How do you perform the initial rollout and configuration ? Does
| someone have to manually associate the RFID with the specific
| zerk and machine and set up a maintenance schedule? How do you
| handle machines where greasing is a function of hours of
| operation and not wall clock time ?
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Great questions
|
| For roll out, we try to upload the data into the GreaseCloud
| before going to site, then we have someone manually fit each
| tag to each zerk, they then use the head unit to read the code
| and map it into the GreaseCloud. Once it is in the grease cloud
| we can set the grease volume, grease interval, etc
|
| For the timing, we have a function to set the operating
| timetable of each machine - most plants this is 24/7, however
| some are M-F 9-5. The intervals are calculated relative to the
| operating timetable of the machine. Machines can be "paused" if
| they are tagged out of production.
| dkhenry wrote:
| This whole thing is a brilliant idea. The Navy has a ton of
| people working on planned maintenance [1], and anything that
| could improve reliability is worth its weight in gold. I know
| you mentioned ships already for grease, but just thinking of
| how many things need maintenance and how nice it would be if
| you could have a system that ensured it was all done. Please
| attach RFID's to filters to ensure they get swapped out!
|
| 1. https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Home/Team-Ships/PEO-
| Ships/Suppor...
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| Very cool! I live in a mining town and the number one issue is
| just getting the mines to adopt new technologies. A lot of people
| very set in their ways. I've heard of million+ dollar projects
| just sitting unused because people weren't bothered to charge an
| iPad.
|
| Do you manage the installs, maintenance, and training yourselves?
| Have you had any issues with people purchasing the system, but
| not using it?
|
| I wish you the best of success! It's a very cool field to be in
| with so much potential.
| timhall99 wrote:
| Thanks Nathanael, Yes, tech adoption is a risk and something
| that we are trying very hard to address. Our strategy is to
| keep the tool & system as simple as possible. Our head unit has
| no buttons, only a screen and a charge port and is retrofitted
| onto existing grease guns. We want to allow operators to work
| as they normally would but to have the tool that augments them
| and makes their job easier. We know its not going to be an easy
| task, but simplicity in design is our strategy to overcome
| this.
| petercondoleon wrote:
| Yes adoption risk is very real for us. We have encountered some
| operators who are as you describe but interestingly liked the
| idea for keeping other operators in check particularly in cases
| where there are teams of people doing the lubrication.
| ryanchan001 wrote:
| We should chat Steve!! Sounds like a lot of interesting potential
| and congrats on the launch!
|
| - Ryan from UpKeep (www.onupkeep.com)
| SteveGreaseBoss wrote:
| Thanks Ryan, I'll reach out, I had you on my radar for post-YC.
| spieswl wrote:
| HaaS is definitely a thing. PMaaS, as well! (Preventative
| Maintenance)
|
| I know a number of industrial robotics manufacturers have been
| pushing data-driven preventative maintenance initiatives. Ideally
| (for the manufacturer) this work is performed by the
| manufacturers techs during scheduled operator downtime, including
| the lubing of mechanical systems.
|
| Have you all thought about presenting an alternative arrangement
| for the lubrication responsibilities of specialized systems, like
| industrial robotics, that might already have maintenance
| responsibilities (possibly contracts) in place?
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