Ecmweb 7592 Wireless Network 2
Ecmweb 7592 Wireless Network 2
Ecmweb 7592 Wireless Network 2
Ecmweb 7592 Wireless Network 2
Ecmweb 7592 Wireless Network 2

Moving T&M to the Fast Lane

July 15, 2015
Wireless communications are poised to change how equipment data are collected, disseminated, and analyzed — and bring improvements to maintenance decision-making.

In the 1990s, as the predictive and condition-based maintenance field began to flower with technologies like infrared thermography, vibration analysis, and ultrasonics, Bob Madding attended a presentation by a leading maintenance guru that left him mildly puzzled. In spite of all the fast-moving technological advancements, the expert declared, effective testing and measurement still turned on communication. Madding, then in the midst of establishing himself in the IR thermography business, buttonholed the speaker after this presentation. He challenged his assertion that communication was perhaps 70% of the challenge in implementing predictive maintenance (PdM)/condition-based maintenance (CBM).

“I asked him how he could say that — that it was fast becoming all about the technology,” says Madding, president of RPM Energy Associates, Prescott, Ariz. “He said to me, ‘you’re new, just stay with it a while.’ I did, and a year later I found myself thinking, well, maybe communication is more like 80% of it.”

Hannu Viitanen/Hemera/Thinkstock

Madding’s rethinking of communication’s role was less an epiphany than it was a gradual realization that the expert was right on the mark. As he grew his IR-driven condition-based maintenance service knowledge, Madding better understood that there was a frequent disconnect between identifying a problem and effectively addressing it. In the years since, Madding has only grown more convinced that technology is indeed but one leg of the stool.

“It’s one thing to find a problem, but it’s still a problem until someone actually fixes it,” he says. “And those who find the problems aren’t usually the ones who fix them.”

Leveraging IT

Bringing those two basic functions together — data collection on the front end and some sort of informed and evidence-based decision or action on the back — remains a formidable challenge. While more and better data on the status and condition of electrical equipment can be collected, and there’s a better understanding of the value, viability and practicality of PdM/CBM, the data dissemination piece can still be a muddle. And without that linkage — the certainty of test and measurement (T&M) data being communicated, understood, and properly analyzed — truly effective strategies can be difficult to implement.

Now, however, just as advances in sensor technology and improved understanding of equipment dynamics delivered improvements to the T&M function, information technology’s evolution may be poised to revolutionize the equally important task of improving data’s actionability. Specifically, the rise of the digital wireless technology complex that encompasses smart mobile devices and software apps, cloud-based storage, digital networks, remote monitoring, and automated command and control holds the promise of changing how equipment performance and condition data are collected, shared, and ultimately acted upon.

Sensing opportunity, T&M device manufacturers and service providers are beginning to explore practical applications for wireless technology. They understand the problems that arise from the all-too-common occurrence of high-quality data entering a black hole of sorts, and spy the chance to address it by piggybacking on the relentless march of wireless communications.

Those on the leading edge of the movement to leverage IT are focused on developing wireless platforms. Device manufacturers are looking to enhance T&M instruments with concurrent and instant uploading, downloading, and communications capabilities. Service providers are exploring building similar capabilities into proprietary and custom T&M tools and procedures.

While the approaches may vary, they share the common goal of increasing the likelihood that essential data are efficiently and reliably captured and properly channeled. Prospectively supplementing or even replacing manual data entry, e-mail, and voice communication — and even IT costs associated with maintaining computer-based in-house maintenance management systems — new wireless T&M platforms herald a potentially powerful breakthrough in the predictive and preventive maintenance universe.

The human factor

The significance of initiatives to explore new methods of gathering and disseminating data is clear to many who labor in that space. T&M pros are impressed by the raw power of today’s test devices to capture data sets that help trained experts in PdM/CBM as well as condition-based maintenance assess equipment status. But they note that, by comparison, problems with the human communication piece of the puzzle remain stubborn.

Accordingly, any advancement that purports to address deficiencies that limit the ability of maintenance professionals to make informed decisions on costly matters related to reliability, performance, downtime, repair, and replacement could be a potential game changer.

Photo. Bob Axelson, chief engineer - Facilities Administration, STARZ Entertainment, uses test tools that log and time stamp readings to help pinpoint when intermittent faults occurred on an electrical system.

Though post-data collection communication breakdowns are the source of many of the problems that frustrate PdM/CBM efforts, even data gathering itself can be unreliable. So while the new contemplated IT tools clearly address what happens after readings are taken and data is collected, they also look to plug holes that can render any subsequent need for sharing, collaboration, and analysis moot.

That front-end gap in T&M remains a concern to people like Jim Carrel, business development manager for McKinstry, a full-service design-build-operate-maintain firm based in Seattle. A next generation of “smart,” connected, and networked measurement tools, Carrel offers, could deliver functionality that makes the data collector’s job both easier and more transparent. The possible end result: more certainty that data is gathered and logged to maintenance specifications.

“When you have human beings responsible for gathering data, there’s always the question of whether it actually gets done,” he says. “Someone taking a reading with a clipboard can write anything down, and there’s also the assumption that he can write legibly.”

More data, better sharing

A connected tool that incorporates a simple and possibly even automatic logging and delivery function would squarely address a variety of T&M reliability challenges spawned by the hard reality of human fallibility, Carrel says.

The prospect of merging T&M devices with mobile communications devices on a common platform also opens the door to enhanced information sharing. In addition to effortlessly sending data captured by test tools, maintenance technicians could also easily collect digital photos of equipment with their smartphones.

Such a visual record could come into play as further substantiating evidence of critical anomalies that may be indicated by test devices. And it might be another piece of a comprehensive package of predictive T&M data generated from different instruments testing variables like vibration, heat and electric current, and voltage quality. Collected, compiled, and issued in real time on a wireless mobile platform, data and visual images could be assessed by maintenance team personnel and other decision makers.

“Part of the value of using something like this would be the chance to bring more people into the mix more quickly,” says Madding. “It’s one thing for a technician to call a guy on the phone and tell him, ‘hey, there’s a problem over here, and we’ve got to get this thing fixed pretty quickly,’ as opposed to sending a quick report with an IR and a visual image along with some comments.”

Quicker response time

Wireless logging and transmission potentially addresses this other key area where PdM/CBM breakdowns often occur. Even if data are reliably collected, there’s no certainty that the information finds its way into the right hands at the right time. Setups that would ensure data follows a pre-determined pathway to decision makers — and allows for real-time sharing and collaboration among them — can help ensure rapid response, thorough analysis, and professional evaluation in the context of an established program.

It’s a concept that intrigues Bob Axelson, chief engineer for Starz Entertainment, an Englewood, Colo. provider of digital video content to pay TV providers. Overseeing a 350,000-square-foot campus housing an uplink facility, three data centers, and an office building, Axelson must work to ensure uninterrupted, 24-7 service to customers. That requires a robust PdM/CBM program employing routine monitoring and assessment of a complex electrical infrastructure — one that can anticipate and detect problems early and react quickly. Maintenance demands a team approach and the ability to fully document and share asset condition information internally and with clients.

That’s achieved now largely through a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), but Axelson sees the potential advantages of putting more of that function on some sort of wireless platform. Maintenance team members are heavily reliant on company-issued iPhones now, so the essential hardware component is already in place.

“Anything that makes it easier to provide the best information needed to make decisions, you can’t lose,” Axelson says. “The ability to go to a customer quickly and say this is what’s happening, this is the data we’ve captured, this is the time frame, and this is what we need to do to repair or replace a piece of equipment is critical.”

Mobile devices don’t currently play a pivotal role in the comprehensive electrical system maintenance services business of Shermco Industries, Irving, Texas. But Mark Pustejovsky, the company’s vice president of workforce development, can envision tapping into them at his company if T&M functions can be displayed and relayed on that platform. One of the reasons is that customers are already clamoring for more real-time information. Also, company teams are trying to bring as much knowledge to bear, as quickly as possible, on the PdM/CBM function, and they’re often hampered by time-consuming uploading and downloading and tethering to desktops and tablets.

“Our customers want cloud-based information at their fingertips, so we’re collecting data and putting it out there for them to see,” he says. “As the costs to provide that go down we see some value in having techs in the field taking advantage of that to get quick support from other maintenance team members.”

Improving analysis

Immediacy is clearly a big selling point for the concept of applying wireless communications and cloud-based servers to the condition-monitoring task. But value could also reside in the prospect of gaining quicker and easier access to historical information, and the ability to use sophisticated software to tease out revealing trends from huge stores of multiple types of T&M data. Up-to-date, fully compiled, and readily accessible, cloud-stored data could provide a comprehensive, real-time picture of equipment condition, helping maintenance personnel make intelligent and correct replacement and repair decisions.

Information, Carrel reminds, is the essential backbone of any maintenance program that seeks to head off costly catastrophic failures. But it only attains value when it’s available in sufficient quantity and specificity to allow trained professionals to decipher clues. If perfected, he says, wireless collection and transmission can only increase the odds of assembling a rich database.

“With predictive maintenance, we may be assigning responsibilities that can’t be humanly achieved, but we can talk about current conditions,” Carrel says. “Condition monitoring is a very important task, especially with electrical systems, which can degrade much more rapidly than mechanical systems. By looking closely for early-stage evidence, planners and schedulers are better positioned to detect failure modes and take appropriate action.”

Efficiency benefits

A next-generation method of taking measurements could also pay dividends through more effective and efficient human resource deployment, observers say. With a powerful yet simplified, more foolproof and potentially safer method of collecting and logging data, organizations could regularly relegate that task to lower-level, less experienced personnel.

“If a Level 1 thermographer on a route comes across something he hasn’t seen, a Level 3 thermographer who might be 500 miles away can be quickly brought in,” says Madding.

Using test devices that can take measurements at distances that better protect workers, or be left in place to log and send ongoing real-time data, organizations could march more steadily in the direction of greater automation.

Madding, who says he’s witnessed plenty of instances where extended periods of measurement ensue when higher-ups refuse to act on concrete evidence of impending failure, sees an opportunity to minimize situations like that by bringing broad expertise to bear quickly on T&M data. That’s not always easy given turf battles, he admits, but at least the knotty logistics piece of getting everyone to see the same data simultaneously could be addressed.

“We used to talk a lot about silos and the need to break them down,” Madding says, adding that the mindset hasn’t completely gone away. “It’s important to have management, engineering, operations, and maintenance on the same page. There’s a lot of finger-pointing that goes on, and one of the challenges is always ‘let’s just find a way to make this thing work.’”

There’s no guarantee that can be achieved with any more regularity by more widespread adoption of wireless platforms to the T&M function. Information overload and oversharing could pose risks. An abundance of data, more eyes looking at it, and potentially more branches on the decision tree could render the PdM/CBM process a bit more cumbersome.

But there’s widespread acknowledgement that more and quicker is generally better when it comes to making maintenance decisions — more information, more readily available, and more experts deciphering the clues. As Madding came to realize, communication in all of its forms is the basis of informed decisions.

“I don’t ever remember a situation where there was overcommunication,” he says, “but I’ve seen underkill.”   

Zind is a freelance writer based in Lee’s Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].

SIDEBAR: Predictive Maintenance Marches On, But Inefficiencies Still Abound

It may not have been completely purged, but the “better safe than sorry” preventive approach to equipment maintenance has beaten a steady retreat over time, bowing to more discerning predictive and condition-based maintenance strategies. But the revolution in thinking about how to approach maintenance has yet to produce the kind of paradigm shift the new evidence-based strategies seemed to promise. For all the new scientific insight into what causes breakdowns — and how they can be intelligently anticipated and managed — maintenance remains a costly, time-consuming, and inexact endeavor.

Judging by some estimates making the rounds, routine maintenance can be a money pit. One expert cited in an industry journal estimates that in the manufacturing sector it only turns out to be cost-justified one-third of the time. Costs associated with the unproductive balance of routine maintenance efforts combine to equal more than 10% of total manufacturing costs.

And even in settings where a predictive approach presumed to be more economical is in place, where taking measurements and performing tests is central, inefficiency may be rampant.

“We’ve found that in maintenance, repair, and related operations, the typical organization experiences perhaps 40% to 50% waste in the process,” says Jim Carrel, business development manager for McKinstry, a full-service design-build-operate-maintain firm based in Seattle.

That hasn’t stopped maintenance operations from generally remaining highly invested in at least sampling the predictive and condition-based model. But the search continues for ways to make it perform better.

One way is making the data collection and analysis process easier, quicker, and more readily collaborative by equipping technicians with wireless mobile communications devices and linking them to test devices. Another is the continued exploration of methods to further automate the process of collecting equipment condition and performance data using built-in sensors, diagnostics, alarms, and other smart devices — and the continuous real-time relay of that information to maintenance management and operations staff.

Indeed, technology may ultimately be the key to solving the maintenance riddle. But until then, refining the element of human intervention will be essential.

“We have a ways to go before we can talk about really having smart facilities, processes, and infrastructure,” Carrel says. “Automation can’t fully take the place of human assessment because nothing is as amazing as the human machine.”

About the Author

Tom Zind | Freelance Writer

Zind is a freelance writer based in Lee’s Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].

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