During the last 20 years, a gap in machinery monitoring strategies has steadily emerged in most plants. On one side lies general-purpose machinery, addressed with offline portable data collection programs, aimed at the reduction of maintenance costs. On the other side lies critical machinery, addressed with continuous machinery protection systems, permanently installed transducers and on-line condition monitoring software aimed at achieving machinery that’s 100% available and reliable.
One approach is focused on the cost of maintenance, the other focused on the cost of lost production. Each has given rise to its own methodologies, its own tools, its own architecture. Unfortunately, not all your machinery fits neatly into these two camps. Some require more than just portable data collection, but do not warrant the same treatment as critical machines.
Bridging the gap
For those machines and related production assets that can benefit from on-line condition monitoring, yet do not require and cannot justify the cost of a continuous on-line system, Bently Nevada offers its Trendmaster 2000 system. Its unique architecture uses both wired and wireless sensor bus technology to deliver periodic on-line condition monitoring capabilities - at a fraction of the cost of a continuous system. By scanning the connected points in the system one at a time, important machinery data is collected every few minutes, instead of intervals measured in weeks or months. Process data can be easily connected to the Trendmaster's sensor bus, just like other measurement points such as vibration or temperature. The result is that on-line machinery information can be provided to the two audiences in a plant that need it the most - operations personnel with trend, alarm and summary formats meaningful to them, and the machinery specialists with the detailed waveform and dynamic data formats they need for effective diagnostics.
A complete solution
The company also offers what it believes is the world's most advanced scanning system for on-line asset management, and installs, commissions, integrates and optimises it for the customer. Many customers find this turnkey approach to be the easiest and most effective way to get their assets on-line, on time and on budget. The company also has the flexibility to cater for customers who prefer to use the do-in-yourself approach.
Competitive advantage
During the last decade, industry's focus has shifted. In the 1990s, improved process control systems were implemented in most plants. Today, substantial gains through better management of the process are decreasing - they have already been made. Attention is now shifting instead to the assets that make the process run. It is called asset management and it is the new frontier upon which competitive advantage is being built. Leading companies have discovered the difference an on-line system can make for their less-critical machinery and other assets, allowing them to truly manage these assets, rather than just improve their maintenance practices. Bently Nevada says that it is not uncommon for clients' payback from a Trendmaster 2000 system to occur in less than a year, and sometimes in as little as a week. Because it gives them insight into what causes the asset to fail in the first place, and does it early enough to make a significant difference in how the problem can be addressed. If they elect to continue running a failing asset, they can do so longer because its condition is being frequently monitored - another advantage of an on-line system. While their competitors are trying to become more efficient at repairing their assets, they can focus on preventing the assets from failing, with a tool that can help them do it. In the words of one plant manager with a Trendmaster system, "It is not that we have eliminated all problems; it is that we now find out about them early enough to correct at a tenth or even hundredth of the cost as before."
Trendmaster 2000 software is supported under Windows 2000, Windows NT and Windows 9X operating systems. It features powerful diagnostic and trending tools which can be used to provide data at the intervals needed for effective asset management while delivering the dynamic waveform data the customer needs to perform in-depth diagnostics. Because trendmaster 2000 can easily correlate data from clients' processes, it is easy to determine the relationship between process conditions affecting the asset and the mechanical condition of the asset.
Bently Nevada SA
(011) 629 4352
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