ITT, Inc.’s i-ALERT and Hexagon’s j5 Operator Rounds will integrate their machine health data tracking and analysis features to help heavy industries reduce maintenance costs and unplanned downtime. The new offering can identify operational risks in advance, which significantly reduces the possibility of failure in pumps, motors and other industrial equipment – as well as the costly repairs they require.
This solution combines vibration condition data from i-ALERT sensors with other monitoring information gathered during j5 Operator Rounds, including data from external systems, photos, videos and documents. This combined data set gathered by Operations and Maintenance will provide additional reliability information to asset performance management programs.
“With this partnership, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” said Akshat Sharma, Global Monitoring & Controls Manager at ITT. “Together, we’re able to give customers greater situational awareness and greater confidence that they can maintain reliable plant operations.”
Operational Risk Management is another important benefit of the solution. With greater insight into machine health, plant operators can avoid potentially dangerous equipment malfunctions. Likewise, they can ensure that equipment complies with health and safety standards.
The solution also provides advantages in terms of environmental protection, especially in plants where hazardous or highly corrosive materials are present. Plant managers have the benefit of highly accurate data about equipment performance and maintenance needs. This helps them minimize the risk of loss of containment incidents to the environment.
“The ITT i-ALERT system is targeted at providing reliability and engineering teams with a modular, easy-to-implement yet powerful data-gathering and analytics capability for rotating and industrial equipment. For Hexagon and j5, we introduce these capabilities to a new audience of operations personnel, enhancing our customer's ability to gather more data easily, and extending the value of our Operator rounds solution with Bluetooth connectivity to Industrial sensors,” said Neil Singh, Senior Strategy Enablement Consulting Lead, Hexagon’s Asset Lifecycle Intelligence division.
Improvements to overall plant operations can also be expected for customers that utilize the integrated system. Not only will data sharing save operators time, but it will improve the accuracy of reporting, build intuitive machine health visuals that are easier to understand, and make operator shift handovers more orderly and collaborative. Additionally, this collaboration encourages operator ownership along with maintenance and reliability groups in a reliable plant operation.
