Harnessing power of Internet of Things (IoT) to cut Motor Downtime

Electric motors are at the heart of almost any manufacturing process. Almost all kinds of jobs in a factory involve electric motors; lifting, pumping, drying, pressing or sucking. Electric motors are the workhorses of industries and are used in dusty and dangerous or difficult areas. It would be right to say that modern industrial life would not exist without the electric motor.

"Sometimes one failed motor can take down the entire production line, which can become too expensive, too quickly. Analysts say that average cost of industrial downtime is $100,000/hour."

Being mechanical devices, electric motors do fail at times. Some studies show a failure rate of 7% per year. While others say on average an electric motor fails once very 14 years. While it might not seem a big problem but imagine a factory where hundreds of motors are installed and apply the above scenario. This means one motor going down every month. Sometimes one failed motor can take down the entire production line, which can become too expensive, too quickly. Analysts say that average cost of industrial downtime is $100,000/hour.

How do factories handle downtime today?

To cut downtime, factories employ maintenance crews who keep an eye on conditions of the equipment and assume responsibility to ensure maximum uptime. Maintenance of electric motors is one of the important parts of their efforts, but it is also quite expensive. Over the years the concept of preventive maintenance has gained momentum and almost every value minded manufacturing will invest in this concept to maximize life of their motor and ensure minimum disruption to industrial process.

If you know how long on average an electric motor runs, you can estimate how often to do maintenance. To be on a safe side and avoid complete motor failure, the maintenance often occurs too early. In such cases the well-functioning parts of the motor end up being replaced – preventively, just to be sure. On the contrary, maintenance for some motors occurs too late. Eventually, preventive maintenance does not guarantee against a new problem occurring shortly after the maintenance took place. Despite these drawbacks, preventative maintenance is probably better and more cost-effective than the “run-to-failure maintenance” alternative. That approach typically results in motor replacement, because repairing a rundown electric motor on the spot is usually not simple.

Finally, this kind of sensor-based data collection is far more precise and thorough than anything humans could achieve. A slow deterioration of the quality of any given electric motor will continue undetected by human eyes and ears until a serious problem develops or failure occurs, but the IoT will notice even the smallest shifts in normal performance over a longer period of time.

The promise of IoT

Today, we waste a lot of resources making wrong decisions and/or making decisions too slowly, like replacing an electric motor when it is not the right time as we saw previously. The promise of the IoT is that we can now collect cost-effective data that already exists, but that we never captured. And we can capture this data continuously, and quite effortlessly, in enormous volumes. When it is combined with AI, we can learn from it to make better decisions, faster. And this is exactly where the value of the IoT is today, and will be tomorrow.

Get in touch with us if you 're interested in implementing IoT for your equipment to maximize efficiency and productivity.