October 15-17, 2024 at Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida
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Expo Hours

Tuesday Oct 15 9 AM — 5 PM
Wednesday Oct 16 9 AM — 5 PM
Thursday Oct 17 9 AM — 4 PM

Venue

Orange County Convention Center

9800 International Drive
Orlando, Florida 32819

About the Expo

North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event heads to Orange County Convention Center in October 2024. FABTECH provides a convenient "one stop shop" venue where you can meet with world-class suppliers, see the latest industry products and developments, and find the tools to improve productivity, increase profits and discover new solutions to all of your metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing needs.

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North America's Largest Metal Forming, Fabricating, Welding and Finishing Event

From the Blog

The Benefits IoT Brings to Equipment Maintenance

By Brent Nelson, Business Development Manager, IoT and Connected Solutions at Donaldson Co. Inc. on on
Connecting your machines to the Internet allows for earlier, cost-efficient service Reprinted with permission: The AWS Welding Journal As the owner, maintenance manager, or engineer in a welding operation, you manage many complex pieces of equipment. You may choose to maintain some internally, others you assign to a third-party service, and some, because of tight resources, you maybe ignore until there’s an issue. All of that equipment generates lots of data that you could use to operate more efficiently. However, most facilities use only a small percentage of their valuable data. Factory automation has been around since the 1970s, but it is only a partial solution. Since then, larger manufacturers have been reaping huge efficiencies from connecting their machines to a local data network and central control system. However, the costs and specialized personnel required to maintain these systems put them out of reach for typical welding operations. This is why the Internet of Things (IoT) is such a breakthrough. Sensors and IoT technology are relatively affordable and can transmit data outside the factory walls for conversion into actionable intelligence— Fig. 1.  In this way, IoT enables maintenance arrangements that were previously impossible on both production machinery and nonproduction equipment, such as dust collectors.

Merging operating data from multiple machines and applications enables analytics to turn data into actionable information.

Comparing IoT with Industrial Networks There is still some confusion about what IoT delivers. IoT is not a solution in itself, but rather a tool to transmit information from the factory floor to personnel who can process and apply it. In traditional industry networks, such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks or distributed control systems (DCS), data is sent to the plant’s local control systems. In IoT, the data is sent to a secure remote server on the Internet for processing. Maintenance alerts are then relayed to the person responsible via email, text, and a web-based dashboard. A solution built on IoT offers the same functionality as many traditional networks do:
  • a way to monitor your assets and processes from a single location,
  • automated notifications (alerts), and
  • historical reporting.
However, IoT also offers additional benefits beyond those of a standard control network. Connected equipment allows multiple parties to work together on solutions in new ways. What IoT Does Well As the scenario in the side bar illustrates, IoT also provides two valuable functions that many standard networks do not: monitoring the status of equipment, and providing data to external partners who can quickly help with diagnostics, repair, and prevention. The following addresses these functions. Monitoring Applications IoT is well-suited for equipment that doesn’t require constant monitoring, but needs to trigger an alert the moment it operates outside the set range. These are sometimes the shop’s secondary machines, such as air filtration. Sensors on these assets can track specific process data including temperature, flow, and pressure, or monitor broader indicators to create reports on overall machine condition. Sharing Data IoT also outperforms traditional networks in the way it enables maintenance partnerships. While traditional control systems are designed specifically to prevent data from flowing to anyone outside the organization, the architecture of IoT solutions allows secure data sharing with key personnel outside of the organization. When the maintenance team and outside technical experts see common data, they can quickly resolve issues and make changes to help reduce costly downtime. When Not to Use an IoT Application Despite the unique capabilities of IoT shown in the sidebar, it was never intended to replace factory automation (SCADA networks or DCS) entirely. IoT is designed to monitor equipment, not control it. The latency in IoT technology — time that elapses between detection and response — is too high to control a factory process. For this reason, industrial IoT should be used to supplement existing networks, not replace them. It is also important to note that IoT is designed to handle small amounts of data from many sources. Monitoring a machine that generates a large amount of data to analyze and store (approximately 5 megabytes per day) may become cost prohibitive for IoT. What about IoT Risks? Despite the benefits of data sharing, equipment owners typically have two valid questions about adopting IoT: security, which drives convenience, and cost, which determines scalability. Let’s walk through those concerns. Security and convenience. Industrial companies are worried about information security, and for good reason. Networks are constantly under attack, and every new device that touches an internal network represents a potential vulnerability. Data exchanged outside a company’s firewall can be a risk. This is where IoT actually brings advantages, not greater risks. Cloud-based IoT works independently from your current industrial networks. If the IoT device uses a cellular (or similar) network and a third-party cloud, the data will never contact your plant network. Because of this, it does not create any new vulnerabilities for your network, which will reassure the IT professionals in your organization. Cost and scalability. IoT solutions can be more affordable than local automation systems. Because traditional industrial networks are designed for critical control applications, they require speed (low latency) and high functionality, as noted earlier. This makes them more expensive to install, and they can be overkill for applications that require only periodic monitoring. IoT represents a relatively low-cost way to monitor specific data points in many machines. Summary The industrial Internet of Things will enable a new level of service and solutions that were never possible with traditional industrial networks. In these new models, equipment owners, manufacturers, and dealer service managers can all share data to deliver the best customer experience. When considering an industrial IoT solution proposed by a solution provider or an equipment manufacturer, ask yourself the following questions:
  • What value can I get (uptime, efficiency, reduced labor hours) from doing periodic monitoring on this machine or process vs. manual observation? Does this create a positive return on investment for my company?
  • Does monitoring this machine or process require low latencies or a high amount of data ingestion, making it a better candidate to monitor through a traditional data network?
  • Does this solution create any security vulnerabilities in my plant’s control systems?
  • How can I work with my external partners (dealers, service companies, and manufacturers) to share the data effectively to save time and money?
The answers to these questions will help you determine the potential of IoT for your operation. With IoT, it is easy to get caught up in industry noise. However, it is important to understand the business problems you are aiming to solve, and find solutions designed to address them. As with any investment in your operation, you need the right tool for the right job. IoT Future: A Connected Dust Collector To illustrate IoT, consider this situation on a factory floor involving dust and mist collectors that filter the air. Early Tuesday morning, there is a critical malfunction on Collector A, causing the operator to shut down three welding stations and interrupt production. The following details how the malfunction would be resolved with and without an Internet-connected collector. Without IoT Connectivity The welding operator goes looking for the maintenance manager to address the situation. Once located, the maintenance manager walks out to observe the machine and decides to call the dealer who supplied the machine and holds the service contract. The manager attempts to explain the malfunction, using whatever visual observations he can make. After significant time on the phone, the maintenance manager and dealer’s service manager speculate on the cause of the malfunction. The service manager schedules a service call, but the closest technician is two hours away. When the service technician gets onsite, she diagnoses the problem as a torn filter that needs to be replaced. Unfortunately, she does not have the replacement filter and will have to return to the parts warehouse. Due to travel time, she will not be able to return until the following day. The technician comes back the next day in the late morning to fix the problem and has the machine operational by Wednesday afternoon, but a day-and-a-half of production has been lost. A year later, a similar filter fails on Collector B and the process is repeated, with another 12 h of lost production. With a Connected Machine The maintenance manager and the dealer get an immediate alert on their phone that Collector A has a critical malfunction. The maintenance manager calls the dealer, who shares the plant’s IoT dashboard and can help determine the root cause of the trouble. For additional help, he calls the support person at the manufacturer of Collector A, who also logs into the web dashboard. Using the real-time and historical data in Collector A’s dashboard, they quickly determine that the torn filter needs to be replaced. The manufacturer sends a technician who knows in advance which replacement filter to bring to make the repair. The tech arrives onsite and replaces the filter. By lunchtime on Tuesday, just three hours after the breakdown, the welding stations are back up and running at full capacity. In the future, the scenario could improve even further. The dust collector’s manufacturer may be able to use data from the machine, and other connected dust collectors in its customer base, to develop an algorithm that predicts filter failure. The welding shop’s IoT system could be automatically updated with this predictive algorithm. Then, the maintenance manager would get an alert before the filter fails that it needs replacing. He would schedule the part replacement during downtime, and the procedure could occur without interrupting production.

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