Improving Machine Health with Machine Condition Monitoring (ft. Prowave)

Hello, and welcome to Advantech's Innotalk. I'm your host, Matt Dentino. Today's topic is another in the series all about our digital transformation of the industrial workspace. On today's Innotalk, we'll be talking about matching condition monitoring. 

We're going to look at recent trends in the IoT area, what technologies companies are implementing, what parameters they're tracking with that technology, and then exactly how they're collecting and using all that data. 

I'll be joined today by one of my Advantech colleagues as well as a condition monitoring expert from Prowave, one of our partners in this space. Together, they're going to help me to unpack all the why, how, and what of condition monitoring, why it's important to the IoT world, how industries can benefit from implementation, and what makes a comprehensive matching condition monitoring solution. 

To get started, let me introduce you to my two guests today, Mr. Danny Hsu from Prowave. Danny is manager of their monitoring SBU out of Taiwan and an expert in matching condition monitoring with decades of experience. 

Also with us today from Advantech is Sen Wu, who is Advantech's product manager for smart I/O and communication with more than 16 years of experience in the industrial automation arena. Gentlemen, thank you for being with me today. Welcome, Danny. Before we get into our discussion, can you tell the audience a little bit about your background and give us kind of a brief introduction to Prowave? 

About Prowave

[Danny Hsu, Prowave]- OK, thank you, Matt. Established in 1989, Prowave have 32 years of experience in vibration analysis, correcting various major industrial fields. We were certified by the Ministry of Economy as a technical service agency chain. 

Each of our equipment or diagnostic personnel has ISO 18436 Vibration Analysis Certification. Prowave is also a general agent of us PCB accelerometer. As predictive maintenance is one overlooking over the Industrial 4.0. We [INAUDIBLE] customers trust the partner in condition monitor system. Or we have set up a remote analysis center and a online inspection to enable back-end analysis. 

Also, we have built industrial certify online presence on more than 4,000 channels in order to support customer in different industrials. We are here in order to meet customers' testing needs, from simple to complex, and create a win-win future-based vision. 

Trend of condition monitoring

[Host]- Excellent. Thank you for that, Danny. We're looking at this topic today in terms of how it relates to the concept of Industry 4.0 and the intelligent factory. At these factories adopting an Industry 4.0 stance should not only strive for manufacturing technology innovation, but they should also focus on machine monitoring, which is an important part of the optimizing the production process. 

So unlike traditional periodic maintenance or emergency breakdown repair, condition monitoring allows the plant maintenance team to detect and troubleshoot hidden faults in advance. 

Take the CNC machine, for example. An engineer can perform condition monitoring by collecting signals ranging from temperature, and sound, and vibration, even energy usage to predict things like motor, or bearing, and spindle health of the machine. 

So when implemented, this type of a routine cuts down on the unexpected machine or parts failure, which in turn cuts into emergency work orders, overtime, the frantic rescheduling of suppliers, or parts toward everything, outside expertise bringing people in. Machine outages can then be scheduled and planned, which is going to reduce the equipment downtime and increase overall plant productivity, while also improving consistent quality of the finished goods. 

So condition monitoring should be considered a necessity for all of our critical assets and even some of their secondary or ancillary type of equipment in order to more efficiently plan and effectively manage the health and life of plant equipment. That way, we're going to avoid unexpected incidents. 

Equipment maintenance challenges

Now, that's the scene. That's the backdrop for our conversation today. And we're going to dive back in with the guests. Danny, we come to you. As you've been working very closely with end users for decades, talk to us about what you see as the main pain points that a good matching condition monitoring program can address. 

[Danny Hsu, Prowave]- OK. I will share my experience. Before we jumped into customer's pain point, I would like to give you an overview of development of equipment maintenance structure. As you can see from the slide, the conventional maintenance we use is breakdown maintenance in order to create higher value in business. 

The method has evolved into preventative maintenance, and condition monitor, and proactive maintenance. But the factory operator gradually become unsatisfied with the breakdown maintenance and preventive maintenance. 

Breakdown maintenance means maintenance after a breakdown. It can cause product production, and truck interruption, and longer downtime. And it may also result in factory equipment damage from the failures. 

About preventative maintenance, it involved regular or scheduled inspection and repair. Even when the equipment is functioning, there is some chance equipment may not need to be checked as often as preventative or unnecessary shutdown, where interrupt the productive. 

I think this advantage you've mentioned about [INAUDIBLE] pain point is equipment maintenance. One, expensive machine failure could result in loss in manufacturing processes. 

And two, unable to predict downtime, coordinate maintenance staff, and deliver necessary materials. And three, waste of the resource caused by unnecessary maintenance. And the last point, unable to measure personal risk. 

[Host]- And I've also seen inspection-induced failures at plants that use highly preventive types of routines to add to what you were just talking about, Danny-- things like dirt kicked into the oil reservoir or a rag dropped into an intake and not discovered until they go to start the equipment back up. 

Those are all excellent reasons to promote and implement the condition-based monitoring program, along with being able to better assess the real-time health. So Danny, can you explain more about why, from your experience, why a condition-based monitoring program is so important? 

Benefits of condition monitoring

[Danny Hsu, Prowave]- Sure, no problem. This approach enable operators and technicians to remotely more monitor the machine performance. The condition data will be collected in the condition monitoring of the way interprets the data in the center alone, whenever a change is detected in machine gears. 

Therefore, condition monitor is used to detect problem before unplanned breaking down. And it schedule repair, responding to the problem. Also, condition monitoring can easily locate the damage in machinery and identify potential risk. 

Online condition monitoring

[Host]- Against that background, Danny, what does a condition monitoring program look like? If you were starting up a new program, what technologies would you use? And how would it work? 

[Danny Hsu, Prowave]- OK. We adopt work around monitoring in some cases. However, in some situations, equipment is hard to reach or in a hazardous environment. So we need online condition monitoring, which continuous check on the state of a system, a machine, or a process, and the generated data in real time. 

Take Prowave's online wired condition monitoring solution. As an example, an ICP vibration is running, is installed on the device to measure the vibration of the machine, which is converted into a voltage and passed through a physical signal line. 

The voltage value is first transferred to DAQ. A DAQ is a circular equation crutch for equipment. Convert it into a digital signal in the LAN, transfer to a system host via network or optical cable. 

Advantech DAQ solution

[Host]- Excellent. Excellent information. Thank you for laying that out for us. Let me now bring in my Advantech colleague, Sen Wu, for this next question. Sen, you've had over 16 years of experience in the automation industry. And as Advantech smart I/O and communications product manager, what can you tell us about Advantech's role in providing solutions to help drive this trend towards machine condition monitoring in smart factories all around the world? 

[Sen Wu, Advantech]- Thank you, Matt. Machine connection monitoring is a process of monitoring a parameter of condition in machinery, vibration, temperature, et cetera to identify a significant change which is indicative of a developing fault. DAQ as bridge to accurately acquire the characteristic signals, sound, vibration, and so on from operating machines, then turn it into the data, then can be interpreting by computer. 

By monitoring this interpreted data, Advantech believe that DAQ can contribute to smart factories in terms of reducing the production of defects through anomaly detection and improving efficiency through predictive maintenance, as known as matching condition monitoring. 

As a leading supplier of data acquisition products worldwide, Advantech has offered a wide range of I/O devices, with various interfaces and solutions from signal-conditioned modules, particularly in PCI, PCIe cards, portable USB modules, DAQ-embedded computers, and a modular DAQ system, as well as the [INAUDIBLE] Navi SDK software development package. 

Advantech's DAQ products are designed for all kinds of industrial automation applications, from machine automation, measurement, and control to matching condition monitoring. 

[Host]- So it sounds to me like the Advantech products cover everything from the shop floor to the top floor, with all the interconnectivity and software in between. I'm going to jump back over to Danny here for a second. Danny, let me come back to you for a second and ask you this next question. I've been keeping an eye on new infrastructure technologies. 

And with the move towards 5G, as well as a lot of new wireless technologies, can you tell us, what do you think technologies that are available today and will be coming available in the future-- do you think that they'll actually be driving this adoption of condition monitoring, whether it's walk-around or online? Where do you see that going? 

LoRaWAN wireless condition monitoring

[Danny Hsu, Prowave]- I would like to introduce LoRaWAN, first [INAUDIBLE] technique technology in recent years. LoRaWAN is a low-power, wide-area networking IoT WAN protocol designed to wirelessly connect to end nodes to interrupt internet. With its low power consumption, the battery life of LoRaWAN device can last up to 10 years. 

More important, LoRaWAN device just need a signal over a long distance and provides a [INAUDIBLE] coverage. Also allowing use AES128 in cooperation to secure a point-to-point data transmission. Last but not least, it effectively reduce low cost due to no wiring and cabling. 

Now, let's take a look at how we use the LoRaWAN device in online wireless monitoring system. Where a wireless instrument is installed on the LoRaWAN sensor to measure the vibration value of the machine, and the vibration will be converted into digital signal directly in the earth as [INAUDIBLE]. 

The signal is a LAN central gateway to wireless the transmission. And the gateway is transmitted through assistant host, through a network or optical fiber. 

[Host]- Excellent. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Since Danny just mentioned that wireless LoRaWAN sensor being used for matching condition monitoring, Sen, can I ask you to share more about Advantech's wireless solutions? 

Advantech wireless solutions

[Sen Wu, Advantech]- Sure. Wireless communication is crucial for IoT data collection. In addition to widely adapted wireless ethernet technology, such as Wi-Fi mesh and 4G, LTE, 5G cellular networks for high speed data acquisition application, in recent years, low-power wide-area networks, as known as LPWAN, suitable for long-distance transmission applications, such as LoRa and IoT have also become popular in remote facility monitoring applications. 

In this regard, Advantech provides a wide variety of sensing and communication device support to major wireless communication and accrued integration technologies. Among the devices was 2000 series is a wireless and sensor all-in-one solution, which is targeting in energy management equipment and maintenance applications. 

Advantech's LoRaWAN vibration sensors join with progress condition monitoring software, creating the GN LoRa wireless monitoring solution. It has been used in vibration monitoring and diagnostic analysis of machines in the equipment. The wireless monitoring solution analyzes vibration characteristics to enable early warning and prevent machines from unannounced downtime. It provides a large amount of labeled data for IoT or AI use. 

Success story of wireless condition monitoring

[Host]- Excellent. Excellent information. So, Sen, do you have any specific industrial application examples where an end user is implementing the solution? 

[Sen Wu, Advantech]- Yes. Here is an application about a condition monitoring in paper mills. Up till now, the paper mill used handheld devices to monitor the status of the motors with regular inspections carried out to check everything works as it should. 

However, manual inspections are time-consuming and dangerous. And the issues are often difficult to diagnose. What the paper mill needed was an online monitoring system to perform on-site inspections, which would also reduce labor costs and the risks to staff. 

We cooperated with Prowave and provided a total solution, including Advantech's LoRaWAN vibration sensor, gateway, and Prowave's GN LoRa system. The vibration sensors attached to the bearing housings of the motors and pulleys connected, then, to the paper machines. 

This would transmit a locational space and isolation eigenvalues through a LoRaWAN wireless. Networks to a WISE-6610 gateway, the data can be read and analyzed by GN LoRa system. And the results were further sent to customer's data system. 

[Host]- It's a great real-world application example. I have to tell you that years ago, I actually spent a lot of time collecting vibration data in paper mills here in the Midwest in the United States. 

And I can tell you from experience that some of those motors and bearing housings can be hard to get to and even intimidating when paper is flying by your face at 3,000 feet per minute. Not to mention when you have permanently mounted sensors, you get a great consistency and repeatability in the data, which is important for the analysis. 

There's no mistake where the sensor needed to be placed, and was placed in the wrong place, or you're not worried about getting it getting the data from the same spot or the same orientation every time. It's a consistent connection to the machine. So I've actually lived that example that you just provided and can attest to the benefits of online monitoring for that type of an application. 

Recap

And with that, we've come to the end of today's InnoTalk program. During our program today, we heard from experts how machine condition monitoring can help prolong the life of critical plant assets, reduce unscheduled outages, increase prime production time, and improved yield. 

We talked about trends toward wireless solutions that are not only intelligent, low-power, and provide excellent repeatability, but are secure and suitable for use in hazardous areas where you wouldn't want to send people. 

And we pulled it all together with a great example of this machine condition monitoring technology being implemented currently in a paper mill. All in all, it's been a great conversation. And I'm happy to have been able to spend time with my two guests unpacking all of this for you. From Prowave, Mr. Danny Hsu. Thank you again, Danny, for your insights and your expertise. 

[Danny Hsu, Prowave]- You're welcome. 

[Host]- And from Advantech, Sen Wu. I greatly appreciate your insights and your experience. Thank you for being with us today. 

[Sen Wu, Advantech]- Thank you, Matt. 

[Host]- And to our audience, I want to thank you for joining this Advantech InnoTalk. As always, if you have any questions or would like more information about anything that you've heard here today, you can reach out to us at www.advantech.com. You can also reach us at iiot.tech@advantech.com. 

We always make the slides from today's conversation available to you for download. So please take advantage of that, as well as the opportunity to subscribe to Advantech's InnoTalk for more videos. 

We look forward to hearing from you and answering any questions that today's discussion might have stirred up. For Advantech, I'm Matt Dentino. And I hope to see you again right here on our next InnoTalk. Until then, so long.