Driving improvements in reliability and maintenance has long been a challenge for manufacturers. Today, it doesn’t need to be.
Moving away from reactive maintenance to routine preventive maintenance is a good first step. Next comes a massive leap in efficiency, uptime, and reliability: predictive maintenance enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). With these technologies transforming manufacturing floors and processes as part of the Industry 4.0 revolution, facility teams can maximize uptime and boost asset health, performance, and lifespan more easily than ever.
Think of what your team can achieve with a precise, holistic view of your equipment. Now, imagine having that capability paired with a seasoned CAT III or CAT IV analyst assisting your team. You’ll finally have the power to transform reliability and maintenance and accelerate progress.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Key to Early Detection
AI and machine learning help to predict failures by constantly analyzing sensor data from critical rotating machinery and identifying patterns that signal a problem. By monitoring vibration, temperature, and other key indicators, AI can catch subtle issues that might slip past human operators.
This early warning system gives maintenance teams time to pinpoint the issue, schedule maintenance tasks, and eliminate the risk of failure—thus avoiding chaos on the plant floor, expensive repairs and replacements, and lost production time and revenue.
Human Insights: Key to Predictive Maintenance Success
AI and machine learning offer breakthrough capabilities, but these technologies have their limits. In a manufacturing environment, over-relying on AI/ML alone can bog down teams and increase operational risks.
Acting as gatekeepers who monitor the raw AI/ML outputs and arm facility teams with the actionable information they need, human analysts play a crucial role. Day to day, they analyze the data, assess the urgency, and help facility teams identify and address root causes to help ensure optimal efficiency, resource use, and results.
“Alert fatigue” avoided
AI models can, and often do, generate unnecessary alerts. A minor fluctuation might be flagged as a potential failure, and false positives aren’t uncommon. These errors can result in an avalanche of notifications that overwhelm and frustrate maintenance teams. In this scenario, it’s easy to imagine a critical warning being overlooked.
With expert eyes on, alert fatigue isn’t an issue. Having a human analyst in the mix ensures only relevant alerts get through and in order of urgency.
Resolution simplified
Beyond interpreting the data, understanding what the patterns suggest, and filtering out needless alerts, human experts can offer prescriptive recommendations in the proper context (operational setting, environmental conditions, etc.). This allows facility teams to neutralize urgent threats to their production line in the most practical, efficient way possible.
Maintenance processes streamlined
Time is often wasted servicing machines unnecessarily, while bigger issues wait to be addressed. Experts help to ensure failure risks are prioritized appropriately so teams can optimize their maintenance scheduling, making best use of their resources while minimizing disruption.
Equipment reliability enhanced
Drawing from both engineering and industry insights, a human expert can recommend best practices for keeping assets operating in an ideal condition to maintain peak performance and reliability. With equipment functioning at the highest level and any emerging issues resolved early, wear on machinery is minimized, helping to extend asset life.
See How AI + Human Experts Are Helping Facilities Prevent Costly Downtime
Conditioning monitoring services that combine predictive analytics with expert insights and recommendations are helping facilities avoid catastrophic breakdowns and achieve significant savings. With no expensive repairs, production losses, or lost revenue, this can mean a six- or seven-figure savings with one asset saved.
For real-world predictive maintenance success stories, and more on how humans and AI are empowering facility teams, check out our recent white paper, Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Enhance Reliability and Maintenance Programs. Download your copy today.
