Condition monitoring : perfect recipe to maximize the value of condition monitoring
Condition monitoring is a crucial aspect of industrial IoT that enables the collection and analysis of real-time data from equipment and machinery. With the right condition monitoring solution in place, manufacturers can gain higher visibility into the health and performance of their assets, identify potential problems before they occur, and reduce maintenance costs while increasing uptime.
At Autobits Labs, we understand the importance of condition monitoring and have developed a comprehensive solution that includes our powerful wireless vibration sensor and Smart Supervisor gateway. With our solution, manufacturers can easily and quickly deploy multiple sensors in a wireless network, receive encrypted data transmission, and monitor equipment performance in hazardous environments.
Our Smart Supervisor is an efficient and rugged tool that provides online condition monitoring data that is critical to an effective predictive maintenance program. By leveraging the internet of things (IoT), manufacturers can access continuous data from a broad range of machinery across multiple industries, including power generation, oil & gas, mining, pulp & paper, metal processing, and more.
One of the key benefits of Autobits Smart Supervisor is the ability to provide live data on equipment performance, enabling manufacturers to identify potential problems before they escalate. With real-time monitoring, manufacturers can take proactive steps to address issues and avoid costly downtime.
Additionally, the Smart Supervisor allows for time-based maintenance and reporting on important machine assets. By analyzing data over time, manufacturers can make informed decisions about when to perform maintenance, ensuring that equipment is always operating at peak performance.
The ability to collect and analyze data in real-time is essential for predictive maintenance, which is another key benefit of Autobits Smart Supervisor. With predictive maintenance, manufacturers can identify potential issues before they occur, reducing the risk of unplanned downtime and increasing equipment reliability.
Ultimately, Autobits Smart Supervisor provides manufacturers with the tools they need to reduce maintenance costs, increase uptime, and improve overall equipment performance. Our solution is flexible and scalable, making it an ideal choice for manufacturers of all sizes and industries.
In conclusion, if you’re looking to maximize the value of condition monitoring in your factory, Autobits Smart Supervisor is the perfect recipe. With our powerful wireless vibration sensor and condition-based monitoring system, manufacturers can gain higher visibility into equipment performance, access predictive maintenance capabilities, and receive continuous data to inform maintenance decisions. Don’t wait any longer to improve your factory’s reliability, flexibility, and safety with Autobits monitoring solutions. Contact us today to learn more and schedule a demo.
Introduction to Condition Monitoring
Machinery faults cannot be prevented even with the most detailed and extensive offline maintenance program routine. Before the next scheduled maintenance cycle, unattended faults leads to unexpected failure of machines which can worsen the case even more.
Such breakdowns can be prevented and maintenance scheduling resources can be optimized with the help of condition monitoring.
Health of the machine can be monitored periodically with condition monitoring and during this operation, plenty of details can be obtained which can be analyzed. Next, trends can be drawn to reach a decisive state to increase the efficiency of machines. Condition monitoring can efficiently save millions of dollars spent on secondary damage.
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Condition monitoring can also help retain unnecessary maintenance and lost production. In all types of production machinery, online condition monitoring is the most efficient, proven maintenance avenue to detect and prevent faults at premature stage. And the best part about online condition monitoring is- it does not hinder the production process at all!
When lubrication or machine components show early signs of deterioration, maintenance and scheduling manager can be notified. Costly and emergency downtime can be prevented with such regular alerts from condition monitoring system. System can also provide detailed analysis of the plant machinery health so that appropriate actions can be taken.
With online condition monitoring, a number of diversified technologies can be combined to provide the most effective and affordable machinery monitoring packages. Modern technologies like vibration analysis, electric motor monitoring, tribology, laser shaft alignment, thermography can now be incorporated with condition monitoring system.
With this combined amalgamation of technologies, users can have surprisingly well precision level, increase machine operatibility which ultimately increase machine life, productivity and thus business revenue.Predictive maintenance can be achieved with such tools in both small and large factory shop floors. Thus, online condition monitoring, is now practically available for everyone!
Autobits can convert shop-floor into a visual factory that helps the operators to take quick decisions that drive the efficiency of production. We, at Autobits, integrate Condition Monitoring and Total Productivity Management with the help of Internet of Things.
We provide solution in a form of a gateway that is connected to the machines and our cloud, enabling high speed data acquisition. We can connect a range of devices within CNC machines, automated manufacturing factories, semi-automatic plants and individual machines.
Condition Monitoring & IIoT
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has a dramatic impact on the industries just as social media has on any teenager of today, probably, even more. Teenagers do get tired and need some rest. But machines are expected to run continuously and perform optimally as long as we maintain them.
Over the years, maintenance has been reinvented. Whether it was reactive, predictive or time-based, every maintenance policy that you use conceives the mindset of your working managers. They sure are loyal to their companies and proud of the methods they use but are largely reluctant to change the same.
Imagine possessing a monitoring system that’s always on, generating automatic repair recommendations and is smart enough to auto-populate work order system. Such systems may also reduce unplanned maintenance and spending on capital equipment by 90%. All these is possible in today’s age by the means of sharing machine data and following the initial repair alerts that such gateways detect.
The idea of replacing process with automation, and experience with smart system may seem impractical to novice entrepreneurs but implementation and applications of IIoT are proving them all wrong. Information is extracted and consumed by every little thing around you.
You may not implement such systems now, but someone else is already using it or will be using soon. They are looking for ways to improve machine efficiency, exploit vulnerabilities and receive what they expect from the machines. Efficiency application of technology and Internet plays a very vital role in such strategies. And the first ones to implement these, wins by huge margin as there are no second chances in the industry. The second prize winners are kind of fishermen who drive where the fish were day before yesterday.
With Internet available everywhere and data moving to and forth every second, how can you afford to not use such amazing condition monitoring systems that provides valuable insights, at by itself!
Modes of Condition Monitoring
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When supervisors and managers at shop floors perform condition monitoring personally, with the help of some equipments, it can be termed as Offline Condition Monitoring.
Since no advanced technologies are used, offline condition monitoring is really a tedious job for supervisors. Diagnosis and fetching data can take as long as 5 days and analyzing these data is altogether more difficult. There is no prediction facility available in offline condition monitoring, unless managers use some algorithms themselves. Accuracy of data is also difficult to maintain as there is limited scope for sensor usability. And to acquire accurate data, high power, gigantic and costly computer systems are required.
Since this whole process is very expensive, every organization cannot afford it. Therefore, it is usually used only in some industries like nuclear power plant.
But then, with fast advancing technology and availability of advanced computing systems, the whole scenario is changing. Condition Monitoring can now be performed without the hazzles of personally checking every machine. It can be performed remotely which is termed as Online Condition Monitoring.
Online Condition Monitoring can complete diagnosis within 5 seconds (yes, you read that right!). Since, it is performed remotely, no supervisor is required. Currently, vast range of sensors are available in the market, which can be attached at multiple junctions of the machines to fetch accurate data.
With increase in programming skills, powerful algorithms can be implemented to not only fetch data from machinery, but also provide analysis, alerts and recommendations for maintenance scheduling. Online Condition Monitoring uses some awesome technologies and it is fast, easy and provides real time data analysis. And the best part is, it is cost effective. Thus, every industry and organization can now afford it, the can use it to reduce unnecessary downtimes, repairs and expenses; improve machine efficiency and thus flourish their business.
Types Of Condition Monitoring
Condition Monitoring of Machines is crucial as it helps to discover information regarding the health of any machine. These early information can be used to detect warnings which can help shop floors to prevent unscheduled outages and also reduce repair and maintenance cost. It helps to optimize machine performance and reduce risks of accidental failures. There are various types of machine condition monitoring. Below are few of them:
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( Image: Monition )
Route Monitoring:
The shop floor technician measures and records the machine data periodically with a handheld device. Such data is then studied to determine whether advanced analysis is required or not.
- Portable Machine Analysis:
PMA (Portable Machine Analysis) is a system where portable devices are used to monitor the health of machines. Typically, sensors are permanently attached to such machines and data acquisition devices are used to fetch and collect data.
- Factory Assertion Test:
FAT (Factory Assertion Test) is used to assure that finished goods meet the predetermined design norms and record possible failure modes of the equipment.
- Online Machine Monitoring:
OMM (Online Machine Monitoring) is the mechanism of monitoring and diagnosing machine equipments and tools as it is in running state. In such system, embedded devices and servers are used for data acquisition, analysis and maintenance scheduling.
- Online Machine Protection:
OMP (Online Machine Protection) is the routine of continuously monitoring machine equipment as it runs. Embedded devices are used to acquire and analyze the huge amount of data that machines emit. Machines can be turned on/off by limit setting mechanism.
The Machine Health Checkup
Machines can be equipped with measuring devices to detect early signs of deterioration in numerous components. It provides warning to operator to prevent a lengthy and expensive disruption due to machine failure and downtime. This technique applied to machine plants in shop floor or remote area is termed as condition monitoring. Its intent is to provide technicians with regular updates on the health of machinery.
Trends can be recognized from collected data. These trends helps operator derive frequency of maintenance and predict the early signs of degradation. It would lead to an internal and expensive fault if such signs are ignored.
The extent to which condition monitoring is productive depends on multiple factors like strategy of the asset managers, suitability of the machine design, importance of machine assets in the operations system and other general record reliability. Therefore, it should be noted that all the machines may not require same type of sensors or analysis strategy, it varies from machine-to machine and industry to industry. But there sure can be some overlay with the measures available from digital numerical relay.
New generation software are used to fetch and store data and then analyze trends from these information. Health of the machinery can be and any alarmic conditions can be detected when monitored values exceed expected limits. It also caters technicians with early warnings and alerts of deterioration within one or more components of the machinery.
These whole process enable maintenance scheduling to correct the issues prior to machine failure. In other cases, the maintenance can be planned so as to suit the conditions of the machine and work load, on the condition that the rate of deterioration is not really excessive.
As factory proprietors become more conscious of the expenses of unplanned machine downtime, electric supply networks are then utilized closest to the long period capacity and various automatic condition monitoring tools, the application of techniques like online condition monitoring is expected to grow.