COMPANIES USE service as a differentiator to get closer to their customers to understand their needs better. Traditional manufacturing companies often face the problem of how to build up innovative service concepts to unlock new revenue streams. Rolls-Royce for example offers their airplane engines not just with a one-time purchase fee, but also as a complete service package with fixed, controllable fees over a longer timeframe. This model, often referred to performance based logistics/pricing, is setting trends in the industry as it allows the manufacturer to understand how the customer operates the equipment and how to design and service their products better.

Having a fixed fee over a long time period will turn quickly profitable if this information can be utilized to save costs. Another example is the Finnish elevator and escalator manufacturer Kone which operates highly profitable in a regulated environment where service contracts must be in place. They offer different type of service contracts such as pay per use, pay per service, a monthly fee or a monthly fee based on reliability. All this is supported through efficient remote monitoring services.

Internet of Things for the machinery

Effective and proven industry standards such as MIMOSA or ISO 13374 offer great guidance in implementing this type of services by collecting machine information. Various sensors can be used to acquire data (e.g. temperature, vibration, acceleration, position or other analog and digital signals), after which the data is manipulated to calculate daily averages. The next step is the state detection to identify exceptions (e.g. temperature increased during the last 2 hours by 5%). All this usually happens on site and important and concentrated information is then sent to a centralized service to derive a health assessment which analyses if a component has a problem.

The next step is the prognostic assessment in which the component lifetime will be forecasted. Eventually advisories can be generated that contain suggestions on when to replace a component. All these processes can be automated by modern information systems to enable reliability, maintenance and condition management. This way new service areas such as spare part analysis, root cause analysis, configuration management, reactive maintenance, preventive maintenance or condition based maintenance start to open up.

Wapice, a Finnish Technology Partner to globally operating industrial companies, has been a pioneer in connecting machinery to the internet and their remote management platform WRM is not just based on the above standards, but also extends them with cutting edge technology such as:

• A modern, customizable and intuitive web based user interface – the WRM Desktop which is comparable to Apple’s iPad interface – that allows service experts to create their own applications, reports and rules without the need to program.
• The WRM server offers a cloud based service which is Big Data enabled and supports industrial security communication standards.
• A rugged, IP65 compliant WRM247+ terminal unit allows the collection of data from various data sources such as sensors, Modbus, OPC, OPC-UA, Ethernet, WLAN or through high-speed CAN interfaces. The unit can collect data offline and when online push it forward to the WRM server utilizing Ethernet, GSM or SMS.

Click Image to Enlarge

Click Image to Enlarge

Fig 1: WRM247+ terminal unit which was bolted to the ABB motor during the Hannover fair to measure vibrations and create a spectrogram. Fig 2: Remote condition monitoring of a motor to analyze the frequency spectrum of the vibrations in addition other monitoring and control possibilities.

The often brand-labeled platform is used by large machinery and energy companies to monitor their equipment, but also to offer an interface to their customers to access information. The web based interface gives an overview of the operational status including recommendation from various enterprises to their sites and assets whereas the automatic created reports are often used to provide evidence in complying to regulation or as an executive status report. Furthermore it is possible to automate or remotely control and hence take quick actions.

Remote monitoring made easy

At Hannover fair in Germany (April 2014) Wapice presented a remote condition monitoring system based on the WRM platform which had a WRM247+ terminal unit bolted to an ABB motor. The unit’s internal acceleration sensor measured the vibrations and transformed them via an FFT analysis to a frequency spectrum that was then send to the remote server where warning limits were set per frequency and an alarm created. Additionally the motor temperature was measured using a 1-wire protocol based sensor and a pulse counter for highly accurate RPM measurement. Eventually a controllable video stream also allows the service expert to take a close look at how the situation is on site. The WRM Desktop designer has been another highlight which allowed the instantiation of new user interface elements that could then be connected to data from the system via a graphically flow-based editor and deployed to the Desktop with ease.

Effective remote condition monitoring to build up new service concepts has never been easier. Complete platforms such WRM provided by Wapice allow companies to build an Internet of Things with their machinery and offer their customers with a secure cloud based service. Understanding how customers operate equipment will create a competitive advantage, lower operational expenditure and also enable regulatory compliance. The content creation shifts from technology experts to service experts who can intuitively create new views. This way content creation can shift down the value chain where even 3rd party technicians could contribute and deploy their innovative ideas via an App store to the platform.

Mathias Grädler,

Product Manager,

Wapice,

mathias.graedler@wapice.com