In most cases, system changes require downtime. Until recently, this ongoing industrial revolution primarily impacted operations personnel. However, as cloud-based technologies become more cost-effective, maintenance teams are moving to the cloud to enable smarter operations, including in implementing preventative maintenance strategies.
The days of measuring with handheld meters, recording data in notebooks, and entering the results into a database at the end of the day are coming to an end. Users are already familiar with accurate and durable handheld devices. For the foreseeable future, maintenance teams will still need these tools to perform routine tests and root cause analyses of assets. However, with the development of the Internet of Things (IIoT), these almost indispensable tools, meters, sensors , and other emerging technologies will become more intelligent to use.
Functional conversion
In 2014, Fluke Corporation launched FlukeConnect, entering the Software as a Service (SaaS) space. This cloud-based software, using Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity, allows data from handheld tools or wireless sensors to be automatically aggregated in one location. The collected data can then be compared and analyzed. This simple step has revolutionized how factories and other facilities are maintained. This is a direct benefit of the increasing adoption and prevalence of IIoT (Internet of Things).
End users want an "overview" of the assets, and an application that displays and organizes them by asset. Operators don't want a human tracking system, but rather an organized presentation of assets and audit trails. Ultimately, it's about showing everything that happens to the assets within the facility.
Professional maintenance personnel want to apply this "profile" to the equipment so they can develop predictive maintenance strategies based on measurements related to asset health. Asset management functions can then predict when maintenance will be required. Typically, technicians want to see measurements from SCADA systems, stand-alone tools, and semi-fixed or fixed sensors.
Today, tools can connect wirelessly to the cloud, eliminating the need for technicians to write anything down. Other features organize and display measurements obtained by the maintenance team by asset. Maintenance and plant managers can see which assets are operating within the specifications and which are operating outside those specifications.
Furthermore, the entire maintenance team needs to understand the operation and health status of the assets they are responsible for. This is made possible by the support of mobile applications and manual tools. Data can also be uploaded to computers regularly. The result is accurate data archived for each asset, and strong support for decision-making.
Figure 1: Accelix solutions meet the requirements of maintenance professionals during the maintenance process. Image source: Fluke.
Software-centric
There's more to be done to become a software-centric company. The resulting solutions aim to support maintenance personnel, enabling them to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently, rather than replacing them. The goal was, and remains, to make preventative and predictive maintenance easier.
Many users of handheld devices also have computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) in their facilities. Companies that maintain motors, pumps, and other widely used assets typically have computerized maintenance management systems or work order management systems. During the transition to IIoT support, maintenance managers or planners, accustomed to their existing application environments, may object to the changing paradigm and wish to continue using their existing work order management systems to store data.
For this reason, Fluke previously acquired eMaint, a supplier of computerized maintenance management systems, to integrate data into Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and computerized maintenance management systems, and to provide a mobile interface. Fluke has also entered the field of fixed and semi-fixed sensor manufacturing by providing solutions for inputting data into integrated systems. This latest software and sensor business unit is becoming an important part of the Accelix ecosystem.
The solution suite stores and categorizes data by asset type and integrates data from sensors and handheld tools into any existing computerized maintenance management system or enterprise asset management system. But what if maintenance managers have already adopted tools and systems with different software: such as thermal imagers or power quality sensors? Each application involves different software applications. Computerized maintenance management systems or enterprise asset management systems come in a wide variety of brands. How can managers or planners access all the data they need in one place?
The ecosystem is compatible with all tools and sensors. It is compatible with thermal imagers, vibration sensors, and insulation testers, and can also be integrated with computerized maintenance management systems from Accelix or with SCHAD. In fact, the system is compatible with any computerized maintenance management system or enterprise asset management system, as well as third-party tools and sensors, assets with built-in sensors, and control management systems such as SCADA, building management, and other control and operations systems. All this data can be accessed via PC or smart devices.
Figure 2: Cloud connectivity for handheld tools and semi-fixed and fixed sensors can simplify data collection.
Simplify maintenance plan
By adding a suite of sensor and software-focused solutions, maintenance professionals can assess their role in the maintenance process. When facilities shift from a reactive to a proactive strategy, there is often a lack of dedicated personnel and, possibly, the budget to include all assets in preventative or predictive programs. They may not be able to add the necessary sensors to monitor the entire plant, or they may lack the technicians to perform preventative tasks on all assets.
Conversely, if the strategies implemented by the plant and other facilities combine preventative, predictive, and responsive approaches, especially favoring the latter in terms of importance and cost, the benefits of integrating a computerized maintenance management system with tools, sensors (including third-party sensors), assets, and operational systems become apparent. This allows the plant to use condition monitoring data to plan maintenance tasks—preventative, predictive, and even responsive tasks in emergency situations.
While insight into the current state is beneficial, good planning is paramount. Problem prediction is largely ineffective if facilities and plants can anticipate potential issues but lack the capacity and organization to schedule maintenance and upkeep. Computerized maintenance management systems that integrate and visualize asset operational data help facilities plan maintenance tasks proactively, regardless of their position within the maintenance process.
The ideal outcome of this process is having technology that can predict adverse results in advance and diagnose what actions maintenance personnel need to take to prevent asset failures. As diagnostics and analytics help end users move towards predictive strategies and activities, we move closer to the Internet of Things of the future.
Disclaimer: This article is a reprint. If it involves copyright issues, please contact us promptly for deletion (QQ: 2737591964). We apologize for any inconvenience.
