BFPA Directory 2019

Digital transformation in the real world which prompts maintenance personnel to respond when required. A service engineer can dial into that ‘dashboard’ from wherever they are currently located and determine whether the vehicle is working well or whether it might have a problem that needs rapid remedial attention. Many OEMs monitor their machine’s engine management system, but now more OEMs and users of mobile and utility equipment want ancillary hydraulics added to this type of offering too. So, in terms of the flow, pressure and temperature instrumentation used previously for pre-dispatch inspection or for breakdown maintenance, OEMs are now looking carefully at how this type of technology can be put permanently on the machine and how this can be made more affordable. There are valuable considerations now being made around the value of the asset and the value of downtime and therefore the amount of money that the manufacturer can charge the user on a monthly basis to offer a service contract and therefore whether it is viable for them to put the instrumentation on or not. The instrumentation has a fixed cost and if you want to measure temperature this is likely to be slightly cheaper to do than measuring pressure. Flow measurement, just by the nature of the fact that this is typically done by an invasive instrument, it is the most expensive of all three. Complete picture Sometimes, people try to measure machine performance by using preventive maintenance techniques and simply relying on what they consider to be a typical forecast of when parts and equipment are likely to need to be repaired or overhauled. However, off- highway machinery is used in such varied conditions and the reality is you don’t get a complete picture unless you measure flow, pressure and temperature. With these three parameters you can accurately monitor the real hydraulic power consumption at a motor, the pump efficiency, the real duty cycle and warning conditions like leakage and over- pressure conditions. So, we are working with mobile machinery OEMs to better understand their requirements and now prototyping solutions which combine all three of these parameters together in a package that is both affordable and rugged enough to survive in just about any mobile environment. For example, we want to provide a solution that links to the CAN BUS, typically J1939, which could work on a machine that is subject to salt spray, massive temperature swings, vibration shocks, long duty cycles and so on. In addition to the effectiveness of instrumentation on mobile equipment in the utility vehicle marketplace from a maintenance point of view, there is also the issue of health & safety to consider. For example, in the case of mining machinery a lot of companies appear to be trying to remove people from the operating environment wherever possible. Mining companies are increasingly investigating how they could operate machinery remotely – and if you want to operate remotely then you need to know everything about the machine. So, again we are seeing more and more applications where customers are monitoring things in real time around the flow, pressure and temperature envelope for their hydraulics and pneumatics. Improving productivity and efficiency www.bfpa.co.uk 43 By Martin Cuthbert, Managing Director, Webtec. I believe there are two main drivers for change in the direction of digital transformation. In the case of heavy machinery, users are increasingly demanding that the equipment is the most fit for purpose rather than it is the simply cheapest they can buy. I think people are focusing more on maximising productivity for the life-time of the machine. Therefore, they are moving towards a machine as a service model rather than seeing their machinery simply as an asset that they own and look after and maintain themselves. There has also been much discussion around servitisation – the provision of services that offer additional value to customers when they buy products – and that is also where I see digital transformation increasingly being applied. In the case of utility vehicle manufacturers around the globe – i.e. producers of road sweeping, salt spraying and rubbish collecting vehicles – the cost and logistics of getting repair personnel to the vehicle if failure occurs – particularly if it has broken down in an awkward to reach location – can be problematic, and if the utility company fails to deliver the services it is contracted to deliver on behalf of the taxpayer it could incur substantial penalties. More functionality So, the manufacturers of these vehicles are now adding more functionality to benefit from certain levels of control remotely; for example, fitting sensors on parts of the machine – such as pumps, valves or cylinders – and feeding the data they generate into a control system. That control system can then feed information to a cloud-based database