How to speed up decision-making and prevent failures

Faced with competitive and economic pressures, businesses need the ability to make quick and effective decisions about how to manage their time and resources. In the context of asset management, this means knowing when and how to take action to prevent asset failure and avoid associated risks to safety and the organization’s bottom line. 

Condition monitoring provides crucial data to inform these decisions, and as the underlying technology and data analytics have evolved, so have the potential applications.  

Here, we share how condition monitoring has developed from an early warning system for critical assets to an essential tool for decision-making and proactive asset management.  

What is condition monitoring?  

Condition monitoring is a tool for maintenance professionals and is an integral part of modern asset management strategies. There are different types of condition monitoring, including vibration monitoring which is effective for monitoring the condition of rotating assets.  

Condition monitoring works by installing high-accuracy sensors that collect and then transmit data to a condition monitoring software system for evaluation and diagnostics. Condition monitoring software typically includes AI algorithms and analytical tools as well as case management tools to help the maintenance team identify and focus on those assets requiring their attention. With the insights provided on the operation, condition, and maintenance of assets, condition monitoring is also the first step in implementing a sustainable asset care and reliability strategy.  

How condition monitoring has evolved.  

Asset-intensive industries have used protection and condition monitoring systems for more than sixty years to maintain asset health. However, due to the necessary infrastructure and cost of early condition monitoring solutions, the technology was typically only applied to the most critical of assets. 

With the evolution of wireless technology and sensing, infrastructure requirements for a full condition monitoring solution have decreased making it more feasible to deploy solutions at scale.  There are now solutions that provide exactly the right feature set, measurement technologies, functionality for specific assets, and are available at more viable price points.

Data integration and analytics extend the value of condition monitoring.  

While condition monitoring solutions have improved and coverage now extends beyond the most critical assets, managing and analyzing the data collected through these solutions has remained a challenge for many organizations.  

Data is often collected concurrently from handheld devices, permanently installed sensors, and wireless sensors, but never brought together or shared on an organizational level. While organizations might benefit from small pockets of clarity and be able to prevent certain failures, they may not be able to easily differentiate between a common part failure that needs to be addressed enterprise-wide versus what may appear to be seemingly unrelated maintenance events. Without a holistic view of asset health, it is difficult to prioritize alerts or signs of degradation accurately.  

Cordant™, an integrated suite of solutions that includes Cordant™ Asset Health, addresses this challenge by integrating data from all monitored assets to provide a holistic view of asset health. Cordant™ Asset Health leverages purpose-built AI¹ to analyze millions of condition monitoring sensor outputs 24/7—alerting teams well in advance of failure, diagnosing root causes, and prescribing fixes. 

The future of condition monitoring  

Embedded intelligence can increase the efficiency of condition monitoring and provide enhanced insights for more proactive asset management. To be effective, these systems need to be capable of capturing, processing, and analyzing enormous amounts of data. 

That is why Baker Hughes has invested in innovative edge devices that can capture and analyze the right data closer to the source. These devices, part of our Cordant™ offering, enable organizations to make fast, accurate decisions to improve decisions to improve operations and therefore accelerate time to value when it comes to condition monitoring. 

Additionally, as the diagnostic capabilities of condition monitoring systems continue to evolve, condition monitoring becomes much more than a tool for maintenance, but a source of insight for asset strategy and process optimization.  

Cordant™ helps organizations harness these insights with our integrated suite of solutions that work together to provide a unified view of the enterprise and empower customers in real-time to make informed decisions, reduce risk, and improve operations. 

To learn more, download our whitepaper ‘Cordant™ Machine Health’s industrial, purpose-built AI’.