ERIKS IN ACTION
Tom Boswell Product Manager, Engineering & Reliability
MAKING ONLINE MONITORING PART OF YOUR MAINTENANCE STRATEGY
Part 3: When knowledge meets know-how
Over the past two issues of Know+How, we have been considering methods you can use to monitor and maintain your assets, and to achieve the key goals of any business: reduced maintenance costs, increased uptime, optimised efficiency and maximised productivity. We have also looked at how an holistic view of the data gathered will help you make more sense of – and better use of – all of it. Now, in this final part of the story, we are looking at how the information you want can provide the knowledge you need. And how know-how can turn that knowledge into the power to improve your operations. Though monitoring ultimately delivers the benefits described above, it is only the means to an end. Between the means and the end, there’s the stepping stone of better-planned maintenance. Better-planned maintenance helps to reduce the risk of unplanned failure. Facilitating better-planned maintenance requires monitoring. And what is the most effective monitoring method you can use? Sensors. While an engineer’s inspections can only provide snapshots of data, a sensor can gather data almost continually, sweeping-up
Issue 42
information at intervals of 60 - 600 seconds. This frequency means that, instead of snapshots, you have the data equivalent of a panoramic photograph, seamlessly stitched together from multiple images. The overall effect is a widescreen view that’s as close as possible to capturing the whole picture at once. Mounting sensors on maintainable items such as motors, gearboxes and pumps will provide data on how the process is affecting the asset condition. When this is assessed in the light of historical data from the same items, it does two things.
The data equivalent of a panoramic photograph
