Matt Fletcher, MD of Fletcher Moorland, the company behind the Meerkat condition monitoring system, looks at the advantages a condition monitoring solution can offer, and busts the myth that the technology is putting maintenance teams out of a job.
The Meerkat condition
monitoring system was
developed in early 2017
for a customer who
had a critical piece of equipment
in a location that was not easily
accessible. It was their main pump
on a floating pontoon at a quarry.
If the pump failed, the feed to the
processing plant stopped. So they
needed a way to monitor it.
Due to the location, a wired
system was out of the question,
so a wireless solution was needed.
The Fletcher Moorland team found
a suitable sensor with a wireless
node and receiver. This was
combined with a standalone HMI
for signal processing. Whenever a
predetermined level of vibration or
temperature was breached, a signal
light lit on the 'shore-side' equipment
and the maintenance office. The
maintenance team were then able to
react to the problem.
Pretty quickly, with the growth in
awareness of the Industrial Internet
of Things and Industry 4.0, interest
in the system grew. The team knew
that it needed to develop the system
further. An early addition was a GSM
gateway which enables the system
to SMS message a mobile phone
when an alarm is breached. This
allowed an entire maintenance team
to be alerted to a problem happening
wherever they were.
The next development involved
moving sensor data from a
standalone system to the cloud and a
web-based dashboard. Anyone with
the correct access could then view
the data; trends could be seen, alarms
and notes acknowledged.
As customers saw the advantages
of the condition monitoring system,
requests to monitor more than
vibration and temperature began
to be made. As a result, sensors monitoring current, humidity, airflow,
pressure, oil condition, fluid level and
sound level were added to installed
systems.
As the solution continues to
develop, the latest evolution is
the addition of edge computing
capabilities. Monitoring systems can
create a massive amount of data,
and edge computing can handle
this more effectively and efficiently.
Couple this with a Raptor gateway,
and the system can benefit from
artificial intelligence and machine
learning capabilities which can help
identify potential issues starting to
happen with equipment.
Of course, one issue often faced
is concern that condition monitoring
solutions will replace people and
cost jobs. But, like many forms of
automation technology, that isn't the
case. What should happen is that
existing staff are able to step away
from mundane, time-consuming
tasks, or unplanned interruptions
to focus their expertise in areas
where they can add more value
to a business – and gain greater
satisfaction from their work.
Condition monitoring solutions
should be the first line of
maintenance. For example, if there is a threshold breach, say a fan's
vibration velocity has changed,
someone needs to investigate.
Used correctly, condition
monitoring solutions reduce the need
to drop everything when something
unexpectedly fails, or spend time
investigating or checking something
that doesn't need to be checked.
It enables maintenance teams to
focus more on proactive rather than
reactive tasks.
A recent situation caught by a
Meerkat remote condition monitoring
system is a good example.
At a site that produces bricks, the
Meerkat system alerted that there
was an over-temperature alarm
on one of the dryer motors. As the
dashboard graph in Figure 1 shows,
the temperature jumped significantly
from a normal operating temperature
of around 25-30°C to almost 100°C.
In this case, the site maintenance
team were alerted to investigate what
was causing the over-temperature
warning. It turned out that the force
vent fan on the motor had failed.
A new one was pulled from stores
and replaced, and very soon the
temperature was within normal limits.
Left unattended, the motor would
have undoubtedly stopped working due to a motor winding insulation
failure caused by the excess heat.
Vibration monitoring would have
probably not seen anything. Thermal
surveys would not have seen
anything until the force vent unit
failed, and being there at that exact
moment is very unlikely. It is also
unlikely that there would have been
any warning of this failure, so having
a continuous monitoring system was
the saviour.
Having a system installed has,
without question, saved this site from
having product quality issues from the
non-uniform drying of its product; it
has probably saved them from having
waste product and lost profit as well.
The early warning meant that the
maintenance team were not required
to spend valuable time dealing with
the aftermath of a motor failure and
were able to instead spend that time
on other tasks which supported the
ongoing productivity and reliability of
their plant.
As well as allowing teams to
carry out more beneficial work,
condition monitoring solutions can also reduce the need for staff to
carry out some more hazardous
tasks. Take the maintenance and
testing of roof fans. If the condition
is being monitored, it negates the
need for periodic checks, where a
staff member must face the risks
associated with working at height.
The number of times this needs to
be done can be significantly reduced
to only when
maintenance has
been shown to be
required.
And no
matter how
sophisticated
a condition
monitoring
solution is, there is no alternative to
the intuition of a trained engineer.
Someone with experience 'walking
the floor' can still pick up on signals
that something is not right. They
may notice sounds that might not
be picked up by vibration monitoring,
smells that could indicate a change,
or movement that is not normal.
With the core monitoring being taken care of automatically, more time is also
available for this type of activity. But the
experience is still very much needed.
It is also true that maintenance teams
have generally not grown following the
COVID pandemic; indeed, many have
shrunk. And alongside this, we have a
skills shortage across the engineering
sector. So allowing those staff who are
carrying out maintenance functions to
focus their time on
more valuable tasks
is invaluable to many
businesses today.
Some vendors
are selling condition
monitoring solutions
as an alternative
to maintenance
resource but that simply isn't the case.
Expertise is needed to understand
where to place sensors and interpret the
information they provide.
Indeed, for businesses introducing
condition monitoring solutions, their
maintenance teams see real benefits
rather than threats to their roles.
www.fletchermoorland.co.uk