Mobile measurement systems rely on people's senses - a really good combination, if not the best: seeing oil spots that appear where they do not belong or noticing sounds and knowing when, and why they do not sound good? Capturing these kinds of clues and automatically putting them in context with measurements from the mobile sensors - this is how the best of everything is used. You could also say 'five senses plus'.
For perfect maintenance, it is a good idea to look closely, listen, smell, feel, etc., and to supplement what you cannot perceive with your own five senses, ideally with the readings from mobile sensors. If one classifies all this information on the basis of experience, conclusions can be drawn. One can react immediately. Maintenance staff can, for example, arrange for a filter to be replaced if necessary because it is completely dirty. They notice that something is wrong. The mobile sensor provides certainty. With permanent sensors, this only works to a limited extent:
If a maintenance employee sees oil dripping from the engine housing, he knows from experience: if he does nothing now, he will soon have a problem. A permanent sensor installed there to monitor the engine does not notice anything at that point. If you are lucky, this sensor will sound the alarm and prevent an unplanned standstill. If you are lucky. Maybe it will work, maybe it will not. In any case, man's "five senses plus" would probably have detected the leaking oil. Unlike humans, who cannot switch off their sense of hearing or smell, a fixed sensor is practically 'blind' to all the other factors around it and thus quickly reaches its limits. And not only that: permanently installed sensors are also expensive and completely anonymous.
Mobile measuring systems, on the other hand, function as direct support for daily work. The maintenance technician is still on the road in the factory. Thanks to his experience, he perceives many small details through his senses and backs up his findings with the measured values of mobile sensors. Decades of experience are thus "cast" in figures, so to speak. That is the perfect, the real added value: the combination of our five senses with the advantages of mobile sensors leads to the best results.
What one cannot do, the other can. It is as simple as that.
Author: DI. Mag. Markus Loinig
Email: markus@senzoro.com
