Is Your Factory Ready to Predict Machine Failures with Precision?

Predicting machine failure sounds great (and it is!). Whilst we always try to minimize any pain in getting set up, it’s important to realize that predicting failure is driven by data and in order to make the predictions useful and reliable, the data from your machinery needs to be of a sufficient quantity and quality (although quantity does have a quality of its own). 

Here’s 3 points to check off so that you know you’re now ready to take advantage of software like PROGNOSYS to automate the condition monitoring, diagnostics and prognostics of your machinery to reduce downtime and keep Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) high. 

You have monitoring equipment in place

We can probably all agree that monitoring and data-logging is important. It doesn’t need to be advanced (for example it doesn’t need to be full-scale vibration monitoring) but some level of monitoring such as thermocouples attached to PLCs or current monitoring of drives should exist. 

Your factory floor is connected

This can be as simple as having your PLCs connected to a IP based network. You’re likely to already have this if you are collecting information on OEE. The more process and machine information directly available, the better. 

Having internet connectivity on the factory floor is becoming more and more important – standard Ethernet or WiFi connectivity can make getting data from the factory floor and into analysis quicker, cheaper and easier than relying solely on industrial control networks. 

You’re storing what you collect

If you’re storing what you collect in a data historian such as Kepware, Wonderware or ThingWorx, or even just an SQL or Microsoft Excel file, congratulations! Having data already stored in an accessible format makes the process of looking through it for diagnostic and prognostic features so much simpler (which reduces costs and time to value significantly). 

What if I don’t have any of these?

Don’t worry, the points above would be considered ‘ideal’ but are by no means mandatory; we already work with customers and partners to help them tick off these points, enabling their machinery to become ‘smart’ so that they can take advantage of reduced costs and downtime. 

Tell me more

We’re working with world-leading companies to help them embrace the advantages that PROGNOSYS can bring to machine failure forecasting. 

Right now, we’re offering a free trial of our PROGNOSYS prognostics and condition monitoring software, to let you predict when your machines are likely to fail, without the cost or complexity of traditional solutions.