Technical Blog Post
Abstract
Smarter Infrastructure & Social Media in the World of Industrial Equipment
Body
Smarter Infrastructure & Social Media In the world of Industrial Equipment
As we have learnt
to adapt and embrace technology to help us be more efficient, we can use
similar concepts in the world of Smarter Infrastructure. Infrastructure is
getting Smarter every day, as controllers behind these industrial equipment’s
are being instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, which helps us to make
informed decisions.
A world of smarter
infrastructure consists of intelligent industrial assets designed for
specialized tasks, whose behavior, feelings and emotions we can articulate, where
they interact with each other, exchange their daily routines and share their
experiences around their performance and maintenance, due to intelligent,
interconnected set of sensors that they are instrumented with. We want them to
express what they feel and how we can help make conditions better for them, so
they can work more efficiently.
Looking at Smarter
Infrastructure in the industrial sector, industrial sector. A few examples
include: Shipping Ports with massive cranes which move containers on and off
the ships and also on the dock, Mining pits where gigantic haul trucks moves
metal ores, Cell Towers acting like mini-datacenters with powerful antennas,
Buildings with air handler units, chillers, boilers etc. In each of these
different industrial sectors, equipment (Assets) is instrumented with many
intelligent sensors, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), Element Management
Systems (EMS), Building Management Systems (BMS) etc.
Let’s look at
Shipping Port Terminals. One of the industrial equipment (Assets) at the port
is the RTG (Rubber Tyred Gantry Crane). These RTG’s run off of heavy duty
diesel generators exposing metrics like RPM, Oil Pressure, Water Temperature,
Current, Voltage, Fuel Rate etc. Drilling into these metrics we find
relationships between Diesel Generators RPM, Oil Pressure and Water
temperature.
For example, water temperatures going up, while oil pressure is going down, can lead to a potential problem. Relationships between voltage and current like Distortion in voltage, can be bad for motor. As we collect data for these metrics regularly, we can predict an issue, before it becomes a failure, avoiding any down-time. These all can be achieved with the data being collected and shared among the equipment (Assets), helping users to make more intelligent decisions.
The constructs of
Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. allow people to interact
with each other. These same constructs
can be applied machine to machine and machine to people enabling Industrial
Equipment (Assets) to share and analyze data (Efficiency and Effectiveness)
across industries. Just as we are able
to effectively share personal status, advice, and remedies with each other,
these Industrial Equipment (Assets) are able to share their operational state information
helping each other to stay active, healthy and most importantly productive.
Resources
IBM Asset Management Community: Stay connected with Maximo
experts
IBM Asset Management Blog: Interact on the hottest topics
affecting Maximo users
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