LPWAN connectivity specialist Actility,  radio transmitter manufacturer NKE Watteco, and data collection platform WMW have partnered to launch a Vibration Monitoring for Predictive Maintenance IoT Solution. The new solution is designed to help manufacturers anticipate defects in industrial equipment.

The solution helps industrial customers increase performance safety and decrease machine shutdowns and work accidents by combining WMW’s application together with NKE Watteco’s sensors and Actility’s ThingPark-powered LoRaWAN infrastructure. The solution is designed to improve reliability, performance and safety of industrial machinery while anticipating outages and mitigating anomalies more efficiently.

The wireless device collects and analyses real time data regarding current health of the assets. The collected data is compared with normal behavioral threshold values to detect or predict malfunctions. The solution also gives global insights by allowing management from one single application dashboard.

The Vibration Monitoring for Predictive Maintenance Solution is designed as a machine agnostic solution, with the aim of monitoring any type of vibrating machines and allow smooth retrofit of legacy machinery. 

The solution is low power and leverages LoRaWAN technology, optimises assets energy consumption and reduces the solution’s total cost of ownership. The Vibration Monitoring for Predictive Maintenance is also AI-based by offering a powerful artificial intelligence IoT sensor, retrofitted with the industrial assets to constantly monitor their conditions.

The Vibration Monitoring for Predictive Maintenance solution has been launched in a kit format which is available on Actility’s ThingPark Market. The kit provides system integrators and solution providers with the required hardware, software and connectivity services to assess an integrated plug and play all in one, allowing to remotely monitor hundreds of different machine types in an unfiled portal. The Kit also integrates with existing machines with no supplementary HW interfaces, leveraging a retrofitting self-learning, artificial intelligence autonomous solution and is available as on-premises and cloud-based application.

The solution includes WMW’s application which acts as an end-to-end central control unit for managing the plant operations. Data is continuously ingested and analysed to provide relevant reports and alerts.

The solution integrates the NKE Watteco’s Bob Assistant, an artificial intelligence IoT sensor, which collects and analyses real time data (vibration, temperature) to assess current health of assets. The collected data is compared with normal behavioral threshold values to detect or predict malfunctions with the Bob assistance AI engine. 

The deployment of ThingPark Enterprise provides scalable private LoRaWAN connectivity infrastructure which enables a wide variety of IoT use cases such as indoor/outdoor asset tracking, while ensuring power-efficiency. ThingPark Enterprise streamlines IoT network operations, providing enterprises with a proficient UX to easily build a multi-gateway LoRaWAN network and feed data to IoT applications.

“Our collaboration with NKE Watteco and WMW is enabling a faster adoption of the IoT predictive maintenance solution. Now solution providers and system integrators can offer a complete AI Edge, simple to install end-to-end solution to their industrial end customer. Integrated with LoRaWAN networks, the automated processes results help in determining and analysing the condition of any vibrating equipment in order to estimate the timeframe of maintenance and alert on real time failures,“ said Shmuel Solomon, Channels Sales Manager, Enterprise Products, at Actility.

“If all the solutions, this one perhaps shows best how easy a rollout can be achieved, in the rather complex environment that Industrial IoT usually entails,” said Bert Vanaken, CEO at WMW

“Through this collaboration we can now help our industrial clients to easily optimise their equipment through monitorisation and bring businesses operational and financial long-term gains,” said Pierre Savary, BoB Assistant Business Developper, NKE