Healthy, Wealthy and Wise: Asset Inspection, Digitization and the Power of Strategic Insights

Healthcare – which you might call asset management for people – covers everything from annual doctor visits and laboratory testing to daily monitoring of health vitals such as blood pressure, glucose levels, heart rate, and cholesterol.

If that regular monitoring delivers abnormal results, doctors will order a more thorough inspection of the particular “asset” in question – e.g., the heart, lungs, or cardiovascular or endocrine system.

This same structure and approach applies to assets in manufacturing and industrial settings.?

Condition monitoring systems – think glucose monitors in humans – use sensors to keep track of key aspects of an industrial asset, such as vibration or temperature changes over time. Other types of sensors monitor specific manufacturing and industrial systems. Sensors from our Reuter-Stokes product line monitor radiation levels, pressurized and boiling water reactors, and flare flame presence. Similarly, sensors from our Panametrics business measure and analyze moisture, liquid, and gas flows in industrial settings, while sensors from Druck are used to measure pressure in almost every sector including aerospace, meteorology, automotive, and semi-conductor.

If data generated by these monitoring sensors exceeds established bounds, a deeper asset inspection may be triggered to see what is causing the deviation. Asset inspections also can be scheduled on a regular basis, based on key operating metrics.

That’s how it has been done for decades. But today’s realities – including increased cost pressures, growing market complexity, supply chain and staffing challenges, and decarbonization goals – require a more strategic approach to maintaining and managing asset health.

New tools and technologies are transforming asset inspection and condition monitoring from being seen as a cost or regulatory burden into a source of value-creation, cost-saving, and revenue-generation.

Data and digitization

This is made possible by data-driven algorithms and software that are connected to assets and operators from the edge to the cloud in order to deliver a range of insights. For example, Bently Nevada’s System 1 can gather and store important equipment-health data from a single manufacturing site or multiple sites, offering real-time analysis, diagnosis, and preventative condition-based maintenance planning at both the asset and fleet level. ?

In the field of inspection, InspectionWorks from Waygate Technologies helps manage and consolidate inspection data so operators can optimize processes, maximize uptime, and predict failures. Collected over the life of an asset, inspection data also can be used to improve product design itself.

OnePM from ARMS Reliability, which was recently acquired by Bently Nevada, is a centralized and connected asset strategy management system that can integrate software, including System1 and InspectionWorks, to efficiently develop, deploy and sustain effective strategies for all types of assets.

Digitization also can deliver benefits on a more tactical level. For example, Process & Pipeline Services (PPS) uses pipeline inspection data to train machine learning algorithms that read data from pipeline inspection vehicles to better understand which apparent anomalies represent a condition that requires attention or remediation.

In collaboration with Rolls-Royce, Waygate Technologies developed a customized “Intelligent Borescope” solution that leverages advanced data acquisition and semi-automated anomaly defect recognition to shorten on-wing inspection time and improve the quality and efficiency of those inspections in the aviation sector.

Decarbonization through inspection

Asset inspection and asset strategy management also play an important role in supporting decarbonization and the energy transition.

PPS inspection vehicles are helping to protect the environment today, but we are looking ahead to a world where clean hydrogen will play a big role in lowering the carbon intensity of industry.?

In preparation, we are developing inspection vehicles capable of routine operation in hydrogen environments.?

Inspecting for pipeline anomalies involving hydrogen embrittlement previously was less relevant, but with the planned introduction of this new energy source, such inspections will be critical to the safety of the hydrogen ecosystem, given hydrogen’s ability, in certain operating conditions, to modify the material properties of the pipeline. In other words, we need to help our customers confidently pinpoint and accurately characterize even smaller anomalies, putting them further ahead of the curve so they can monitor the importance of any defects found and proactively remove them before they have a chance to become a concern.

For wind and hydro generating technologies, Bently Nevada’s condition monitoring and Waygate Technologies’ inspection solutions can help optimize uptime, lower costs, and keep the clean electricity flowing.

Waygate Technologies also can support electric vehicle manufacturers to minimize manufacturing defects in components such as batteries. This is done using non-destructive testing capabilities (NDT), like industrial computed tomography (CT), during the production process. This digital 3D x-ray capability, coupled with computer vision and auto-defect recognition in NDT inspection solutions, will also minimize the waste of raw materials, such as rare earth minerals like lithium, whose mining and refining have a large environmental footprint.

Looking ahead

We are excited about what digital twin modeling can offer. Developed by inputting data about an asset’s components, including their manufacturing and assembly history, ongoing operational performance, and various operating parameters in the rest of the plant, the digital twin gives operators a virtual model of the asset. The digital twin can be used to explore different scenarios, risks and hypotheticals involving external factors, such as ambient temperature, or operating parameters, such as speed, vibration, temperature, and operating rhythms to see how those changes would impact outcomes such as performance, maintenance intervals, spare parts replacement, quality, efficiency, and emission levels.

Longer term, we see even more impactful solutions. We continue to push the limits of physics in making sensors and inspection tools with greater precision, accuracy and durability. On the digital side, artificial intelligence and machine learning will make it possible to move beyond predictive maintenance. Soon, software will offer prescriptive maintenance that, for example, will recommend a course of action given a predicted maintenance issue. Beyond that we envision self-refining systems that continually “learn” from the data collected to refine the loop from predictive to prescriptive that continues to improve operational uptime and performance.

From cost to profit center

For too long, manufacturing and industry have seen inspection as an unwelcome and costly necessity. The reality, now, could not be more different. By keeping your assets safe and healthy with systems that are transforming asset inspection, conditioning monitoring becomes a value-generating competitive advantage and is positioning firms to lean forward into the energy transition and decarbonization.

Baker Hughes Digital Solutions helps customers collect, monitor, analyze and control data crucial to asset health management. We all sleep better when we have had a thorough medical check-up. At Baker Hughes, we deliver that same peace of mind to our customers for their industrial infrastructure.

How do you ensure peace of mind when it comes to the health of your industrial assets? Let me know.?

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