TRC-2018 Learning Zone 37:41
by Matthew Bollom, National Instruments

There are many large pieces of equipment which are critical to your business, and keeping these running in a reliable and predictable manner is key to minimizing downtime and operational costs, improving machinery reliability, and ultimately increasing revenue. Real-time asset monitoring tools can help operations and maintenance management to predict faults, and to respond appropriately to any fault that occurs. However, it requires massive amounts of data and the transition from manual route-based measurements to a fleet-wide surveillance program, which ultimately touches many elements from sensors to networked data acquisition nodes to servers to historians and predictive technologies. Lastly, an aging workforce reaching retirement in the next few years exponentially increases the need for effective and automatic knowledge transfer, management and training. How does the system help the maintenance and reliability engineer to be more effective and efficient? The system automatically predicts equipment failure and notifies a person or system so that pro-active steps can be taken to avoid equipment damage and unscheduled downtime. At this session, get a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the largest power generation companies in the USA, as well as, a leading pump manufacturer, is leveraging National Instruments open and flexible hardware platforms to integrate more advanced sensors into OSIsoft PI System as well PTC ThingWorx IIoT platform that goes beyond vibration measurements. Examples of these sensors, measurements that make existing assets smart include vibration, thermography, motor-current signature analysis, and electrical magnetic signature analysis.