Vibration monitoring has become an essential technology across multiple industries, offering critical insights into machine health, operational efficiency, and worker safety. This comprehensive guide explores the vital role of a vibration monitoring system (VMS) and why they have become indispensable for modern manufacturing.

What is the Objective of Vibration Monitoring?

Vibration monitoring provides a proactive approach to equipment maintenance and performance optimization. Maintenance and reliability can detect potential issues before they escalate into costly failures by continuously analyzing the vibration patterns of machinery and mechanical systems. This predictive maintenance strategy allows you to:

• Identify early signs of mechanical wear and tear
• Prevent unexpected equipment breakdowns
• Reduce maintenance costs
• Extend the operational lifespan of critical assets
• Minimize production downtime

Read: ‘Five Reasons Why Vibration Analysts Love Augury’

What are Vibration Monitors Used For?

Vibration monitors are used across manufacturing to monitor industrial machinery to ensure optimal performance and prevent unexpected failures. Such machines include:

• Motors
• Pumps
• Bearings 
• Rotating equipment

In addition, vibration monitors are versatile tools used widely across numerous (related) industries and applications, including automotive, aerospace, construction, and energy sectors.

Read the ‘Life of a Vibration Analyst’ series:
‘Aiming to Be Obsolete: Behind the Scenes with Augury’s Manager of Reliability Operations’
‘Bringing The Factory Home: A Day In The Life Of A Vibration Analyst’
‘A Trade Transformed: 20 Years Of Vibration Analysis’
‘A Fitbit For Machines: With Vibration Analysis, The Goal Is To Extend Life’ 

What is the Purpose of a Vibration Sensor?

As the fundamental data collection points, sensors form the core of a vibration monitoring system. It can:

• Capture detailed vibration frequency and amplitude data
• Convert mechanical movement into electrical signals
• Provide real-time insights into equipment condition
• Detect anomalies that might indicate potential mechanical issues
• Enable predictive maintenance strategies
• Take in more than vibration data for deeper insights, such as temperature and magnetic flux

Read: ‘How AI-Driven Vibration Analysis Enables Higher-Value Maintenance Work’

What Are The Benefits of Vibration Monitoring?

The benefits of implementing a robust vibration monitoring system are extensive and far-reaching:

• Cost Savings: By detecting potential issues early, you can avoid expensive emergency repairs and unplanned downtime.
• Improved Safety: Identifying mechanical problems before they become critical reduces the risk of equipment failure and potential workplace accidents.
• Enhanced Efficiency: You can optimize maintenance scheduling and improve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Use actionable insights for maintenance and operational strategies.

Conclusion: It’s All Good Vibrations

With vibration monitoring systems, you can optimize performance, ensure safety, and maximize operational efficiency. By investing in advanced solutions, transforming your maintenance strategies, protecting your workforce, driving sustainable growth is possible.

And as technology gets stronger and demands increase, monitoring will become an even more sophisticated and important tool for predictive maintenance and operational excellence.

Read: ‘Finally… The World’s First Edge-AI Native Machine Health Sensing Platform’.
Or reach out and contact us.

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In the world of manufacturing, a well-organized storeroom is the unsung hero of production efficiency. Why? Because a strong program will help you lower inventory and reduce reliance on “hidden” stores and just-in-case parts. It’s also a critical part of any reliability improvement effort, ensuring that maintenance teams get the right parts in the right quantity in the right condition and at the right time. 

How is your storeroom contributing to operational success at your plant? Managed strategically, a spare-parts storeroom will help maintenance teams become more efficient, improving OEE, raise safety standards, and boost morale. 

As an Augury Presales Solutions Architect, I’ve had the privilege of interacting with many manufacturing sectors and stakeholders at every level, and I’ve seen the good and bad – from plants that lack any kind of storeroom strategy to those leveraging machine health data to streamline inventory efforts and parts ordering. 

No matter where you are in your journey, these best practices will set you on the road to success.

1. Build a storeroom team

• The primary goal of storeroom operation is to balance spare part inventory levels to protect against lost production, with the storeroom team providing for the efficient and effective delivery of parts. 
• Access to the store must be limited to authorized persons: The storeroom should have roles that align with the main functions of ordering, receiving, and issuing parts. While various organizations have different structures, these main functions must be covered to enable the smooth functioning of the storeroom. 

2. Optimize the storeroom environment 

• Be sure the storeroom gives you enough room to avoid congestion–the ability to find parts should be easy and include a defined catalog and storage process. 
• The area should be well lit and have designated working areas that enable the storeroom team to effectively execute their work tasks.
• Employ a regular process to support the 5S conditions in the storeroom.

3. Prioritize spare-part organization and upkeep

• Be sure spare parts and tools/equipment are inventoried, controlled, and available, and regularly inspect and replace them as needed; regularly review inventory levels to ensure they are accurate and in compliance–no hidden stashes of parts in remote locations or technician tool boxes/lockers.
• Establish an area that can help spare parts avoid degradation and maintain like-new condition, i.e., bearings stored to prevent damage, belts stored to prevent exposure to UV lights or from physical storage, shafts on motors and gearboxes should be rotated regularly, reduce humidity to prevent rust on metal components.
• Label hazardous cabinets designated for flammable items.

4. Establish inventory controls

• Establish inventory management practices such as cycle counts, obsolete part removal, non-moving-part level reviews. Document receiving practices with inspection to verify parts match specs.
• Put practices in place to maintain the integrity of the parts and bill-of materials (BOM) lists; implement a process for creating, updating, and maintaining BOMs for new equipment, new parts, and obsolete parts.
• Create an automatic reordering processes, after-hours support, and ordering for emergency work.
• Use machine health data to supplement usage and stocking levels.

5. Create a planned-work staging process

• Create a process to kit spare parts for planned work and pre-stage part kits and tools for planned work.
• Create a process to return unused parts to stores within 24 hours of work completion and a process to dispose or restock parts.
• Use machine health data to plan what work to do and when to do it based on machine and parts condition.

By having the right structure and management practices in place, the storeroom can help ensure the reliability performance for the site. Implementing the techniques listed above can help achieve those ends and make the storeroom a trusted component in the journey to production excellence. You can even start to utilize a partnered solution like Augury’s Parts as a Service (PaaS) program with DSV to get the right parts when needed.

If you’re looking for more great resources on machine health, join The Endpoint, Augury’s free online community. You can interact with or learn from other manufacturing pros, comb through knowledge base articles, and take online courses to keep your skills sharp. I hope to see you there!

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Augury’s Vibration Analysis 101 series opened with the edition ‘Waveforms, Spectrums, and Diagnostic Basics,’ where industry experts took a deep technical dive into everything you need to know to apply vibration analysis to your CBM program.

Whether you are an old VA pro or looking to learn more, Augury’s new series, Vibration Analysis 101, has something for everyone. The opening webinar, ‘Waveforms, Spectrums, and Diagnostic Basics,’ was hosted by myself and Solutions Architect – and seasoned vibration analyst – Andrew Pry.

Webinar covers the basics with rundowns on:

• The pros and cons of route-based and online monitoring.
• How time waveforms turn into data that can diagnose common machine faults. 
• The knowledge you need to start your vibration journey.

Key takeaways:

1. Vibration is a powerful tool to understand the health of your equipment.
2. If you are detail-oriented, enjoy math, listen well to others, and are willing to put in the work, you could be an excellent vibration analyst!
3. Learn the fundamentals! This includes recognizing common fault types such as Bearing wear/lubrication issues, coupling wear/misalignment, gear wear, sheave issues and belt wear, and rotating/structural looseness.
4. Learn the tricks of the trade! For example:
   – Use the spectrum to diagnose issues. It would be best if you zoomed in to make sure you have the correct frequency since fault frequencies can be very close to each other
   – Know the feature trend or spectrum you are looking at and what it means
   – The trend is your friend. If a feature is increasing over time, it’s worth investigating. You can begin by overlaying an older spectrum with a newer spectrum – which might show what frequency is increasing. The next step would be to find where that frequency is coming from in the machine and inspect it.
   – Don’t assume you are right because you are certified. Please keep an open mind to other people’s knowledge and learn from it. 
5. There are multiple avenues to start implementing a vibration analysis program.
6. Data isn’t enough. Knowledge is critical to understanding what actions to take.
7. Know where to start. Follow a training – through videos, classes, and mentors – and get those certifications. 

Furthering Your Reliability Journey

As we hear from Andrew with his experience and what he’s learned, it isn’t enough to understand that data. You need to know the machine and how it operates. You need to know what actions to take when you’re stumped. Only then can this tool come together into something you can roll out and really advance your reliability journey.

Watch the webinar Vibration Analysis 101: Waveforms, Spectrums, and Diagnostic Basics on-demand.

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Over at Augury’s online community ‘The Endpoint’, I wrote an article outlining how a Machine Health solution can engage shopfloor teams in amplifying Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). The key is clarity: breaking it down to specific losses. 

Making The Losses Tangible

It’s easy to get distracted by the many different definitions of OEE – as well as the many types of losses it involves. But the article, ‘Overall Equipment Effectiveness & 6 Losses’ keeps its eye on the ball: “to define how to look at the losses in the context of using Machine Health data to improve the performance and health of the machines.”

The article is currently being actively discussed by Augury’s relatively fresh online community ‘The Endpoint’ – read all about it. 

The 3 Components and 6 Losses of OEE

First, let’s get a definition for OEE, we can all get behind. The one from Seiichi Nakajima’s classic book Introduction to Total Productive Maintenance is certainly a good place to start:

OEE = Availability x Performance Efficiency x Rate of Quality

The article then clearly breaks down the equation into its parts – which each have two associated losses. “By breaking down OEE into the losses and using Machine Health (MH) data, the shopfloor teams are empowered to solve problems and address the items causing the losses. Making the losses tangible to their work environment enables them to be involved in the solution of the performance gaps.”

A) Availability

Availability is the amount of time the line is scheduled to produce products minus any downtime, with two essential losses: 

1) Equipment Failures 
2) Setup and Adjustments

How Machine Health can help the maintenance team in maximizing availability: In short, anomalies are also flagged – so they can be dealt with before they become a problem. Also, with the right data you can plan your downtime, and also after a repair verify the machine is indeed healthy.

B) Performance Efficiency

Performance Efficiency is how many pieces were produced versus how many were meant to be produced if everything went to plan. It’s associated with two specific losses:

3) Idling and Minor Stops 
4) Speed Losses

How Machine Health can help the maintenance team in maximizing performance efficiency: By comparing your data with data across similar products and factory lines, problems can be avoided and root causes identified. 

C) Rate of Quality

The rate of quality is a measure of how many good products are produced versus the total number produced. Its two losses are: 

5) Running Waste 
6) Startup Waste

How Machine Health can help the maintenance team in maximizing the rate of quality: It’s not only about creating a quality product, it’s also about minimizing the waste of resources and utilities. In other words, accurate data is essential for going after sustainability goals. 

Good For Business, Good For Culture

In summary, OEE is more than a tool to assess the performance of a business – in other words, it’s not just a simple management tool. OEE can also be broken down into specific goals that can inspire shopfloor teams to help solve problems and make improvements. The combination of good machine health data and an empowered workforce boosts both the business performance and the work culture – the classic win-win scenario.

Read the full article – filled with lots of handy hands-on solutions on how teams can fight waste.

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Prescriptive analytics can help you transform your operations, improve your supply chain management and boost efficiency. The key is to find the right partner who can not only collect the right data, but turn it into real-time wisdom for effective decision-making.   

The Many Problems…

Manufacturing has always been a tough business with many challenges – and little respite. And here’s just an abridged list: 

·       Safety Concerns 21K accidents annually in manufacturing (NIST)

·       Waste Issues $3.3B manufacturing waste created due to defects (NIST)

·       Gas Emissions 30% of global emissions created by industry (Our World in Data)

·       Labor Shortage 8 in 10 manufacturing executives surveyed said not filling jobs has a moderate to very high impact on maintaining production levels (The Manufacturing Institute)

·       Missed Production Targets 4-10% increased profitability in organizations with higher availability and more efficient maintenance workforce (McKinsey)

·       Unplanned Downtime $50B lost by industrial manufacturers to unplanned downtime (Deloitte)

·       Pressure to Reduce M&R Costs 2x Preventive maintenance is roughly twice as costly as PdM (ARC) 

·       Slow Digitization 74% of manufacturers are stuck in pilot purgatory having not yet successfully scaled Industry 4.0 use cases (McKinsey) 

Meanwhile, we are overloaded with data – data that can help us in our decision-making. But it’s coming from everywhere, in the form of feedback from operators, technicians, equipment and our leaders – not to mention the hard data coming in from our PLC, MES and CMMS systems. And then there are all those emails and reports…

How do we sift through this mass of data and turn it into short and punchy actionable insights?  

“Operating a plant without predictive maintenance is like driving a car at night without headlights.“ – Tim Holmes, Reliability & Equipment Engineering Principal Consultant at DuPont 

A Single Solution: Continuous Machine Diagnostics

To make a dent in your ever-growing list of challenges, you need to make wise decisions based on solid real-time information.

And now for the good news: this is where diagnostics come into play.   

What Does This Look Like In The Wild?

There’s a lot of inspiring success stories out there – across all sectors of manufacturing. 

• Global Forestry Products Supplier uses Machine Health to cut downtime and achieve 11x ROI
• Major Chemicals Company transforms productivity – with fast ROI and while saving $350k of throughput loss from a single machine event during Proof of Concept
• Multibillion-dollar global Hygiene and Paper Goods Company optimizes operations – saving $23M to date
• Global Food Leader reduces pump failures and M&R spending
• Top Building Materials Manufacturer achieves fast time to value – with fast scaling across 24 sites

“This has been the best thing that has happened to this maintenance department in the 28 years since I have been here.” – Maintenance Technician, Leading Global Hygiene and Paper Goods Company 

Conclusion?

We live in a data-rich world. However, the industry still lags in being able to analyze this data in a way that accelerates and heightens your decision-making powers. But the solution is now out there. Find that diagnostics partner and make it happen.

Dive into more success stories.
Or reach out to talk to us direct!

This article is based on a presentation I made with my esteemed colleague Augury Solution Architect Graham Schlanger. It took place on October 18, 2023 during The Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP) Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida.

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