SMART TEMPERATURE SENSING BEYOND TEMPERATURE LOGGING

With this article, I’d like to share with you the importance of focusing on temperature sensing instead of temperature logging. What I mean is that current temperature monitoring systems are of perfect use for temperature logging. Those systems are mostly offered without analytics and without any kind of trending, meaning that a simple alarm notification will be generated from the moment that defined limit values are exceeded.

Shortly said, the data of temperature sensors may be perfectly visualized, but they have not the slightest connection with ‘adjacent’ sensors, like:

• vibration;
• pressure;
• outside temperature;
• temperature of the cooling equipment, but also in combination with the frequency of door openings, the load factor of freezers and so on.

However, a new era of temperature logging has arrived. It is way more valuable to go BEYOND LOGGING. With beyond logging, I mean that there are more temperature sensors who directly and indirectly deal with the cooling process. The fact is that temperature alerts in cold chain may have several causes:

• doors that aren’t closed;
• frequent door openings in rooms with no cooled air;
• or technical issues (such as refrigerant leakage, contaminated air condensers, a defect regulation or abnormal vibration levels of the compressor).

TRENDING

Most often, temperature notifications come with ‘trending’. In some cases, the defect or the issue may have even started weeks in advance before alerts are actually generated. ‘Smart trending’ offers enormous value as it enables early insights in temperature progression. On the one hand, it prevents damage to refrigerating equipment. On the other hand, fast and early actions help you save on equipment components and prevent you from (false) alarms.

The SAE is the heart of the platform that enables deep analytics. It can merge disparate data streams, compare and contrast values within these streams over time and perform continuous mathematical operations to derive intelligence.

So, by analyzing several technical and non-technical parameters with a smart algorithm (TURNING DATA INTO INFORMATION), huge customer value is created. You can shift from a reactive to a proactive approach with guaranteed uptime by combining smart temperature sensing and condition monitoring of the asset.

With Smartlog, we’d like to show you how fieldbus information in combination with external sensors and environmental parameters provide ‘trending insights’ by graphically visualizing data on a smart dashboard for Industry 4.0. Our technology for effortless digital transformation.