Companies are only successful today if they can actually deal with the permanently accelerating changes in a sensible, flexible and creative way. All the necessary adaptation processes, i.e. change management, ultimately affect all areas of the company - including production. In the best case, maintenance staff as part of production are already part of such change management and thus part of the solution. It is a good idea to actively involve their competence, function and tasks.
If maintenance staff use mobile sensors to support their daily work, they are already part of the change management processes that put a company on the road to success or keep it there. Equipped with mobile sensors that do not remain permanently on the equipment, they measure on site themselves. They compare what they see, feel and hear on the basis of their experience with the results provided by the mobile measuring system. If permanent sensors are installed, they only see complicated measurement data without the 'total concert' of impressions that are simply indispensable. From a change management perspective, permanent sensors are therefore a disaster.
Not to mention the fact that permanent sensors have to be looked after and maintained. This monitoring of, for example, 100 motors and thus 100 sensors is time-consuming and costly "babysitting". The maintenance staff have to make sure that the permanently installed sensors really transmit data and, above all, that the batteries do not run down and that the sensors are not defective. Permanent sensors ultimately banish the maintenance staff to the monitor of the PC. From here, they can or should work with the figures, which are difficult to classify. The complexity for the individual maintenance engineer is unbelievably great compared to the unclear added value that results for change management.
Mobile sensors, on the other hand, integrate maintenance staff much better in change management processes. If they go into production with the Ultrasound Condition Monitoring System, they are on the move in production, can measure for themselves and perceive with their senses in a complementary way: Is the bearing or the gearbox ok? Does it match what I hear, see and feel? In this way, experiences are combined with data-driven analysis possibilities to come to conclusions that absolutely can and will change processes.
This approach using mobile sensors can be perfectly mapped in the organisation, used in change management processes and leads to success – it is as simple as that.
Author: DI. Mag. Markus Loinig
Email: markus@senzoro.com