The application arises from the need to monitor and anticipate the problems of one or more machines managed by a PLC. These problems, often resulting from the accumulation over time of small discrepancies, require, when they occur, ex post technical operations maintenance.

Embedded Energy Technology (EET) wanted to build a dashboard for their customers to visualize the data analytics for the stream systems. They wanted the readings collected from the sensors to provide a complete picture of what is happening inside the component, and are displayed in a Web Portal that analyzes and presents the data in a concise format. The dashboard interface will also let customers set up email and text message alerts to be triggered when temperatures of the sensors customer select fall outside of the range they set. Summary reports are emailed monthly that highlight total energy savings, component health and month-over-month / year-over-year comparisons.

Manufacturers rightly focus on improving profit margins and growing revenue. Attracting new customers, selling more products and lean practices can help. However, as equipment sophistication increases, so does the ability to monitor equipment. Manufacturers can now develop revenue from maintenance services. Preventive maintenance has its advantages but to really drive uptime and maintain service levels, predictive maintenance is needed. Seamless IoT and machine sensor data integration is critical as well as a low-latency messaging backbone for scalable, fast and reliable transport. Delivering potentially large quantities of data at sub-second speeds is key to downstream activities. webMethods Integration, featuring Universal Messaging, addresses this need with an enterprise-grade service bus for connectivity, messaging, transformation and security of machine data for advanced real-time analytics.

Oseco were completely new to Industry 4.0, Oseco needed to find a lean and quick method for successfully implementing condition monitoring.

“Well before it went live, we had worked out a clear plan for exactly how we were going to use the new versiondog versioning and data management software from AUVESY,” says Michael Mrugalla, who works in process automation at the Mainz plant. “We also had to think about what backups really meant for us. With all our field devices, control programs, drive systems, programming languages, file formats and software applications, we needed to know precisely what we have to back up in case a breakdown (e.g. a power outage) stops production. Because the whole point of making a backup is to be able to recover data quickly and easily when something goes wrong and continue working as if nothing had happened. But that means more than simply restarting production, it also means we need to be able to pick up where we left off with our ongoing process maintenance and optimisation.” It was particularly important to Nestlé that their backup strategy be built around a sin-gle continually active and universally appli-cable solution. And they wanted it to maintain a centralised backup of all the data necessary for both recovery and further development for all devices and all related projects (i.e. every piece of hardware and software). And the programs actually running on controllers need to correspond precisely with the data on the server. If not, the reason must be easily identifiable and the valid version always available to be reloaded onto the device.

The current state of condition monitoring requires manual measurements that are compounded with aging equipment and the retirement of knowledgeable personnel.

A distribution center used a conveyor belt systems to transport a wide variety of products to appropriate locations. When all went well, products were delivered, stored and shipped back out with a minimum of trouble. But a breakdown in any of the motors running the conveyor belts could interfere with operations and cause unacceptable shipping delays. The distribution center decided to use remote monitoring and decision analytics to predict where and when, preventative maintenance could keep small problems from ballooning into major disruptions.

Kaunas Energija's Heat and Power Plants were distributed across the country, including in places lacking an internet connection. This made supervision and maintenance difficult and expensive.

Gary Bruner, the president of Carolina Precision Manufacturing, a contract manufacturer that specializes in small-diameter, close-tolerance CNC Swiss turned parts, had a problem. Over breakfast that morning, Gary had logged onto the MachineMetrics monitoring system on his laptop at home to check the status of his machines assigned to a lights-out operation, but saw immediately that two of his machines were not in production. “What’s wrong with machines 35 and 36?” he thought to himself. Upon arrival to the shop, Gary learned from his operator on duty that this type of hold up was nothing out of the ordinary, and was in fact a product of inefficient startup procedures that had simply never been analyzed or augmented previously. In an industry with razor thin margins, Gary understood that the keys to growth and success were in efficiency and quality. He understood the importance of keeping tabs on production stats, job status, uptime, and setup. However, there was no way to know how well machines were doing in real time. What was causing this additional downtime? Furthermore, CPM’s current methods of measurement and data collection were not only time consuming, but had quickly becoming outdated. Historically, CPM had an employee dedicated to the collection of utilization data. This employee would walk around to each of the machines, collect scrap tickets post-production, talk to operators, and record yesterday’s data into their current ERP system; not to mention that this manual data collection was prone to errors, and would take upwards of 2 hours per day. Without the ability to visualize their results, the recorded data was not very actionable.

Parker wanted the ability to apply a common cloud-based remote monitoring platform across many applications. Compressed air can be expensive and inefficient, so Parker’s innovative Transair piping system was chosen as the initial host product. Parker had a unique chance to create a solution that would help facility managers understand their compressed air systems’ key performance so that they could efficiently manage and optimize this critical system.

The Spanish Government has launched a CO2 Capture and Storage Program in Hontoman with the aim of developing this technology. This programme's approach is based on the fact that CO2 capture and storage could be an essential part of the solution to achieve substantial global CO2 emission reductions.

In the framework of its predictive maintenance offering, ONEPROD part of the ACOEM group provides monitoring solutions that allow to avoid unexpected breakdowns in industrial production tools. Traditionally ONEPROD was using wired data acquisition systems. However they were costly and hard to install in harsh environments or explosive zones, like in the oil & gas and mining industry. To cover the distance to connect and power the monitoring equipment considerable lengths of cable are required especially in industrial spaces with difficult access. Developing a wireless data acquisition system became a key success factor in the ONEPROD strategy in order to avoid any cabling issue and to improve the safety of the staff in charge of portable measures.

In 2016, Kevin Stoddard, a managing partner, had a problem. InControl’s customers required sensors on several equipment distributed across multiple sites and locations. To accomplish this, InControl needed a cost-effective solution fast. They also needed this solution to be intuitive for the equipment owners, highly secure, and broadly capable of delivering custom analytics to clients around the world.

While in the midst of developing SYMPHONY®, a fully automated slide staining system for standard Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) staining, Ventana realized that they required a remote service solution to ensure that customers received an exceptional level of service. However, with a tight timeline to develop and launch this new product, there was some reluctance to integrate additional software. “There was some internal reluctance toward implementing the remote service technology with our SYMPHONY instrument given the short timeframe,” explains Greg Dameron, Director of Development at Ventana. “In fact, the executive team informed me that if the software would delay the SYMPHONY launch by even one day, then we would not implement it at all.” The company began evaluating commercial remote service offerings, seeking a solution that would provide value to customers without disrupting system stability. “Our products are based on stability, so we needed the remote service technology to be stable as well,” says Dameron. Ventana sought to reduce instrument downtime to fewer than 24 hours by remotely monitoring all field instrumentation on a 24/7 basis. This would enable the abilities to remotely diagnose and repair issues, provide “over-the-shoulder” troubleshooting and training for users, and track inventory to automatically replenish reagents in real time. “We felt strongly that delivering remote service would help us achieve a response time that we could not otherwise meet,” says Dave Flaten, Vice President and General Manager of the Primary Staining business unit at Ventana. “We believed that it would become an integral part of the product line.”

After spending millions on an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) infrastructure, including CO2, compressors, pipelines, injection wellheads, and fluid separators, Chaparral began to see its long-term investment pay off as oil production increased. However, when a CO2 compressor fails, CO2 volumes to the pipeline plummet by 50% or more. The operator needed predictive intelligence to prevent such an event.

Best Buy wanted to quickly develop and deploy apps to achieve business goals. Also, create apps that are scalable and low-maintenance.

Our client (confidential), a major provider of Nuclear Energy in the UK and Europe were looking to enable equipment monitoring and data reporting capabilities in their nuclear facilities for increased operational efficiency. In these facilities, the use of Radio Frequency based networking is prohibited and therefore, an alternative solution was required.

Bosch security systems offer solutions with pre-installed connections in it, which is tested once before it’s made available for sale. Now when they have sold the solution they had to made sure its working and there is no loss in connectivity. Bosch security due to its nature of business has to keep track of where the said device is installed so they can troubleshoot in case of any issues. Now to keep track of more than 10,000 devices is a hard thing if you do not have any reference against devices. Bosch needed a solution where they can add information against each connection about its specific location and could see at a single glance if it's working or not.

Central wastewater treatment facilities need to meet stringent requirements in order to operate reliably and in an environmentally compliant manner. The responsible persons have. in particular, to ensure the availability of the plant on a 24/7 schedule. Numerous variable speed drives fro pumps and fans generate a harmonic content of the current in the supply that can lead to thermal overlkad of the electrical infrastructure and to malfunctions of sensitive equipment. In this application example, the power factor correction equipment suffered from significant additional losses caused by the harmonics.

Nestlé needed to minimize downtime at their ice cream freezing facilities. Prior to the installation of WIN-911, offsite technicians took up to an hour to respond to alarms which could serve as a health hazard.

The installation of WIN-911’s alarm notification software at the Tobyhanna Army Depot was done as part of an overall energy efficiency project. In the early 2000s, the base worked to decentralize their coal-fired steam heating plant. This project included the construction of 10 boiler rooms housing 21 new boilers, as well as 37 air rotation units installed in various buildings. The entire infrastructure had to be integrated into HMI/SCADA systems and the existing control systems had to be upgraded. Ameresco, a leading independent energy efficiency company, was selected to head the project. Ameresco, in turn, specified WIN-911’s alarm notification system as the software platform used to instantly alert staff of any problems.