Fleet driven by IoT
IoT has a pretty straightforward role in fleet management. Sensors and devices are embedded in the vehicles. Data are then captured and analyzed which may trigger alerts and notifications. It is mostly used to track:
Driver Behavior:
Ad-on, third party sensors are attached to the vehicle along with traditional GPS technology to not only track physical location but also monitor driving habits.
Fuel efficiency:
The fleet manager always wants to target on increasing the efficiency while cutting the cost. And one of the most crucial factor here is the efficiency of fuel. It is important to know how the behavior of driver affects fuel efficiency. Events like how long the trucks are idling, how fast the vehicles are going on average on top of the actual consumption data, how quickly they are being accelerated and decelerated. Depending on the model of the truck, fuel efficiency can be tracked by both retrofitted and embedded sensors.
Maintenance:
When monitored parts are close to failure or are in need of a tune up, signals can be sent from the sensors embedded to the vehicle. Sensors can be used to monitor tire’s pressure level, allowing the driver to inform about the wear out before its too late.
In late 2013, there were around 11 million fleet management connected devices which is forecasted to increase to 60 million. Connected fleet has many benefits. Connected ships accelerates productivity and efficiency. It gets a hold on increasing environmental disturbance.
They also help improve the operational efficiency. According to stats, there is:
- 15% increase in vehicle efficiency
- 15% reduction in material waste and cost
- 25% reduction in accidents and injuries
- 50% increase in labor productivity
- 68% reduction in vehicles travelling to site
Smart fleet management helps reduce environmental impact to a great extent. It can reduce fuel consumption, emissions and also minimize carbon footprint layers. If used efficiently, it can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 75% and reduce fuel consumption by 26%.
What is TPM?
After having a quick start on Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), let us also have look at TPM.
A universal approach for equipment maintenance that optimizes the production process can be termed as Total Production Maintenance (TPM).
Operational efficiency of machines can maximized by preventive and proactive maintenance approach of TPM. TPM clears the hurdle between production and maintenance management by facilitating the managers and operators to help them maintain their equipments.
TPM program thus helps to increase the involvement of floor workers by creating an atmosphere for shared responsibility of resources and equipments. This can be very powerful in improving the productivity by increasing up time and reducing cycle time.
TPM typically emphasizes on:
- Zero defects
- Zero stoppages
- Zero breakdowns
- Zero accidents
Conventional TPM
Introduced in 1960s, the core of conventional TPM model lies within the following 5 foundation phrases and 8 pillars.
Foundation Phrases
The foundation phrases of TPM consists of what is popularly known as ‘5s‘. It builds a working atmosphere which must be neat and well-organized. The 5s are:
- Seiri / Sort – Discarding the objects which are not needed in the work area
- Seiton / Set in Order – Arranging remaining objects in an efficient manner.
- Seiso / Shine – Cleaning and inspecting the work area thoroughly.
- Seikestu / Standardize – Building standards for properly performing previous three steps
- Shitsuke / Sustain – Interaction within employees to ensure that standards are regularly incorporated.
In a clean and well-organized working environment, where machines are properly arranged, it becomes easier to find any tool or parts. Identifying layback such as fluid leaks, hairline cracks, fluid leads during production becomes easy. Thus creating 5s foundation makes the working process easy and flawless.
Pillars of TPM
The eights pillars or activities of TPM focus on preventive and proactive measures to improve machine reliability.
- Autonomous Maintenance
- Planned Maintenance
- Quality Maintenance
- Focused Improvement
- Early Equipment Management
- Training and Education
- Safety, Health, Environment
- TPM in Administration
Pillars of TPM
The eights pillars or activities of Total Production Maintenance (TPM) focus on preventive and proactive measures to improve machine reliability. They are:
Autonomous Maintenance- Planned Maintenance
- Quality Maintenance
- Focused Improvement
- Early Equipment Management
- Training and Education
- Safety, Health, Environment
- TPM in Administration
- Autonomous Maintenance
Operators are handed over the responsibility for routine maintenance such as inspection, lubricating, cleaning. This gives an opportunity to the operator to increase his knowledge of the equipment. The feeling of ownership prevails in operators as they clean and lubricate the equipment. At higher level, it helps to identify emerging issues before they fail altogether. Iot and Machine Automation are highly interlinked.
- Planned Maintenance
Maintenance schedules are planned based on preventive and proactive failure rates which reduces unplanned downtime. On the other hand, it permits to plan the maintenance period during the time when equipment is not scheduled for running and production.
- Quality Maintenance
Error detection and prevention is designed in the production phase. It focuses on eliminating root source of defects and thus improving project quality. Root Cause Analysis methodology is applied to remove such defects. By reducing amount of defects, it helps to reduce sudden expenses.
- Focused Improvement
Incremental improvements in equipment operations when a limited number of employees work together. Identification of recurring issues becomes easier which can be resolved by functional teams. This group of limited number of people is usually a collection of various talents who build an engine for constant up-gradation. This outcasts open innovation in the industries.
- Early Equipment Management
Directions to improve the design of new equipment are derived through practical knowledge and understanding of manufacturing which is obtained from TPM. This way objectives of the performance level for new equipment can be obtained much faster. Maintenance too, becomes simpler because of the involvement of employees before installation.
- Safety, Health, Environment
It is important to maintain a healthy and safe workplace. It eliminates safety and potential health risks as it precisely targets the goal of hazard-free and accident-free working environment.
- TPM in Administration
It focuses at applying the TPM abilities in the administrative functions. Beyond plant floor, the extended TPM benefits can be attained by addressing the waste in the administrative functions. Operations such as scheduling, order processing and procurement can be improvised.
Benefits of Automated OEE Tracking
Performing manual OEE calculations can sure give a kick start since only five details are required ( Planned Production Time, Ideal Cycle Time, Stop Time, Total Count and Good Count ). Manually calculating OEE deepens the knowledge and understanding of OEE. Despite, there are some really strong benefits of inclining towards the automated OEE data calculation.
Some noteworthy benefits are listed below:
- Real time Results: Automated data collection enables real time results which can have an impact on techniques like Short Interval Control (SIV)
- Stoppage Time: With automatic detection methods, the accuracy of tracing unplanned stop time can be 100%, while it is typically between 60% to 80% for manual calculation
- Short Stops and Slow Cycles: Practically, it is impossible to manually track short stops and slow cycles for most of the equipments. Due to this enormous amount of useful information like event and time-based loss patterns can never be figured.
- Operator Focus: Automated data collection helps operator spend quality time, focusing directly on the machine rather than wasting time on paperwork and calculations.
How to create perfect OEE Goal?
One of the important question that strikes in everyone’s mind is how to set 100% effective, perfect goal for OEE. There is this great way, a technique for doing Best of the Best. Below are the details of its working:
- Track OEE components like Availability, Performance and Quality of the targeted equipment for at least one month. Don’t forget to compile the data by shifts.
- Keep track of the best (highest) individual results of Availability Performance and Quality by evaluating resultant data of each shift.
Multiply this best individual scores together and calculate Best of Best OEE score
Six Big Losses of OEE
The Six Big Losses are utmost important to know as they are nearly generic in all the applications universally for manufacturing and they are the most common causes of productivity loss. This losses are nothing but the broken parts of the OEE components -Availability Loss, Performance Loss and Quality Loss. They can provide a great starting framework to ponder over.
Unplanned Stops
It is an Availability Loss. Unplanned stoppages account for any stipulated amount of time when an equipment is scheduled for production but isn’t running due to some sort of failure. Some common failure examples include equipment failure, breakdowns, unplanned maintenance, etc.
Setup and Adjustments
This loss is usually addressed through setup time reduction programs. This an availability loss which can be termed as planned stoppage. This happens when a machine is scheduled for production but is not running because of tools adjustment or changeover or material shortage.
Small Stops
Small stops happen when a running equipment stops for a very short period of time (a minute or two) which is resolved and restarted by the concerned operator. This is a performance loss and also known as Idling and Minor stop. Some common reason of such failure are misfeeds, material jams, quick cleaning, blocked sensors, etc
Slow Cycles
This issue accounts for the event when an equipment runs slower that its expected or the ideal cycle time. Slow Cycles is a Performance Loss. Anything that prevents the machine from running at its nameplate capacity can be put under this category.
Production Rejects
It raises attention on the rejection of products due to defective parts produced during stable (or steady) production state. Production (or process) defects are quality loss since OEE measures quality from the First Pass Yield perspective.
Reduced Yield Startup Rejects
It consists of the defective parts that are produced by startup until stable (or steady) production is reached. It includes both rework able and scrapped parts as per OEE quality measures. Also known as reduced yield, is a Quality Loss. Some examples are incorrect settings, suboptimal changeovers, wrong warm-up cycles, etc
Smart Manufacturing
At times, it gets difficult to ascertain the long-time benefits of IIoT, yet the following three are the most trusted operational environments that would add flavor to the world of IIoT.
Smart Enterprising
Tight integration of manufacturing, smart and connected machines push the limits of IIoT further. This increases the capability, flexibility, efficiency and profitability of the manufacturing unit. It does seem complicated to implement but creating new standards from the available set of protocols of Information Technology and Operations Technology can break the ice of instability.
Performance Management of Assets
IIoT can be fruitful to take better and forward-looking business decisions by deploying global connectivity and analysis tools. These tools can easily gather the data and provide real time actionable information. This can also improve asset performance.
Augmented Operations
Plants are now evolving from being machine-centric to being user-centric. As youth is entering the markets with tremendous knowledge and skills, the less skilled-aged workers are moving towards retirement. This replaced workers will soon expect and need all the information at their fingerprints. Thus augmented operators will use mobile devices, transparent connectivity and analytics tools to both develop their skills and increase productivity.
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.
Image Credits: festo
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
Image Credits: Motorship
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.