Even a one week pilot can deliver eye-opening reliability insights
Wireless Condition Monitoring Pilot Delivers Insight
Recently, a pharmaceutical manufacturer piloted Machine Sentry® to monitor the health of their air handling units (AHUs), critical assets that, if compromised, can result in costly downtime and contamination risks.
The AHUs were located in hard to access areas. Some were installed inside noise abatement enclosures, which could not be opened while running due to safety protocols. Manual inspection was difficult and infrequent, leaving key assets exposed to undetected failure.
If an AHU fails, production in the associated lab must stop immediately. The current batch is scrapped, and before operations can resume, the lab requires full decontamination followed by repair or replacement of the AHU. This process can take days and cause significant operational and financial disruption.
Rapid setup. Immediate value.
Within 20 minutes of the work permit being signed, the AVT Reliability team had:
- Created two AHU assets in the Machine Sentry® database
- Installed and configured two MSF 2 fixed sensors to collect vibration data every 6 hours using magnetic mounts
- Deployed a Machine Sentry Gateway for autonomous data transmission to the central platform
These two AHUs were identical in specification and located in adjacent production labs, ideal for a comparative pilot.
Unexpected insight from day one
While both AHUs were driven by variable frequency drives (VFDs), which explained some natural fluctuation in vibration amplitude, one anomaly stood out immediately.
Despite being identical on paper, Laboratory 2’s AHU consistently showed higher vibration amplitudes than its sister unit. The difference was persistent across the pilot period and could not be attributed to expected VFD behaviour alone.
Root cause investigation fell outside the scope of this initial pilot, but the value of the insight was clear. Even in a one week deployment, Machine Sentry® flagged performance differences that would otherwise go unnoticed and could point to a developing issue in a critical asset.
This is what condition monitoring should look like
Fast setup, remote data capture, intelligent alerts, and no disruption to normal operations, all with the flexibility to work in confined or high risk environments.
If your facility relies on critical rotating equipment and you are struggling with limited access or insufficient data, Machine Sentry® can give you clarity, quickly.
