IIoT platform: JOIN
Many entrepreneurs are searching for alternative ways to continue their business in times of restrictions due to the pandemic. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. Starting or continuing your Industry 4.0 project (or digital transformation) is also not easy with all the limitations these days. It is often not possible to visit customers or factories. However, many companies still want to keep production running. Here comes the importance of finding alternative methods to carry on your production processes.
Yokogawa has been working on a new IIoT platform named JOIN with Perfact since last year. “Seems like I’m even busier with Industry 4.0 projects than before COVID-19”, says Maurice Jilderda, Business Development Manager at Perfact. Is it a coincidence? “Maybe. But on the other hand, these days it’s extra important to be able to remotely monitor the condition and performance of plant assets from home. This situation gives a chance to new IIoT solutions that come in handy these days — starter kits.”
JOIN Starter Kits Industry 4.0
Yokogawa and Perfact developed several starter kits for IIoT and predictive analytics. These are ideal to start a project or do a pilot. The kits are a cost effective and plug-and-play solution for specific use cases or applications. The kit contains everything needed for monitoring, from wireless sensors to early warnings. Moreover, the kits are easy to send in a box via a mail-order company and are easy to deploy with a ‘quick reference card’ and detailed instructions. The dashboards and algorithms are already in place before the hardware has even arrived at the factory because we make use of templates. When the customer receives a login account, they can immediately start monitoring. In the case of an anomaly, they receive a direct email or SMS.
The image below illustrates one of the JOIN starter kits ideal for rotating. It contains three Sushi Sensors with a gateway.
Use Case: Condition Monitoring of Heat Exchangers
There are several use cases together with several other starter kits, for example: monitoring safety, energy losses, performance, pollution, malfunctions, quality and many more.
“At the beginning of April, we installed an IIoT solution for heat exchangers,” says Frank Knobbe, IIoT Improvement Leader at Yokogawa. “It was a critical temperature monitoring system for a heat exchanger that cools in the flow of a compressor. The customer had no insight into the performance of the heat exchanger. Due to undetected contamination in the heat exchanger, the compressor failed recently, which caused high repair costs and production losses.” By applying JOIN, contamination is predicted, and anomalies are detected at an early stage. The condition information became instantly available on the dashboard and the performance of assets is displayed in real time, all directly after the startup of the plant”. This way, the user is informed in advance and appropriate measures can be taken to avoid future damage or dangerous situations.
Interested?
Faced with the pandemic crisis, many industrial leaders carry one business imperative: maintaining their plant operations. IIoT, implemented in a plug-and-play mode, can be instrumental in ensuring business continuity and reducing financial damage by ensuring plant personnel safety and security, improving liquidity, and minimizing maintenance costs. Do you want to start with JOIN or have questions? Contact us here and follow JOIN on LinkedIn.
Picture credits: Ico Maker/ stock.adobe.com
