Managing big data is critical to understanding asset health

Understanding the performance of an individual piece of equipment or asset is relatively straightforward with direct monitoring and feedback. But scale the monitoring up to multiple assets across a site or several sites and the challenge becomes much greater and enters the realm of big data.

Big data has historically been critical in our understanding weather patterns and the impacts of climate change around the world. As computers replaced manual logs to record and analyse data sets, the nuances in recorded measurements became apparent for the first time. The idea of the ‘butterfly effect’ was first introduced in 1972, by Edward Lorenza, to explain the subtle impact that weather can have in one part of the world, compared to another. This was discovered by accident when a data set was rounded to save space and rerun, resulting in completely different weather pattern predictions compared to the results of the original data set. The impact was significant despite very small differences (a 1% shift) in the source data.

Through large volume data analysis, a complete picture of a given set of assets can be developed as a theoretical model i.e. a ‘digital twin’ describing their behaviour in operation. This digital twin can then be used to predict failures before they occur or provide relational information to understand cause and effect across a broad asset base and increase efficiencies in asset health but also energy consumption and operational performance. ?

To collect large amounts of data from multiple assets Mitsubishi Electric has the necessary tools with a versatile and scalable range of PLCs and EDGE platforms. These platforms can be used to aggregate and cleanse data and provide a degree of closed loop analytics at the Edge, or securely pump data to the Cloud for remote processing and analysis. The resultant analysis of the aggregated data can then be visualised using local HMIs or through overarching business intelligence dashboards that can be created in a Mitsubishi Electric ICONICS Suite.

By presenting complex data sets in easy-to-read formats, Mitsubishi Electric can empower businesses to better manage asset health and performance.?For more information get in touch: https://gb.mitsubishielectric.com/fa/contact