Future of vibration monitoring and condition monitoring in manufacturing setups

[u/Leonidas927]

I was exploring the vibration sensing and condition monitoring solution providers and I can clearly see some big players in this field - Bently Nevada, Wilcoxon, Shinkawa and others. I am also able to see many smaller manufacturers and solution providers in this space. I also saw on reddit itself that many people commented that many companies view this as a good to have feature and not a necessity.

What are your views on this space? Is this a good space to work in? Do you see this space growing? If yes, what do you think, whether people will consider smaller providers for these solutions or will they go with the giants in this space?

[u/Jazzlike-Material801]

As someone who worked as a production engineer, the guys on the floor despise these systems. Ours was installed by an outside team and continues to be maintained by them because no one internally stepped up to take ownership of it and the tech was purchased by our VP (who never went to the floor).

If you could dumb down these systems to the point of which a production worker could monitor and maintain it at a glance—you’d have a Billion dollar system.

Until then, no manufacturers large or small will l adapt these systems. Even if you rebrand it with super special AI

[u/Unfair_Factor3447 → u/Jazzlike-Material801]

Seems solvable. Why would one that could be monitored and maintained at a glance be worth a billion?

[u/Jazzlike-Material801 → u/Unfair_Factor3447]

Less staff / less training. Most manufacturers hire at a rate 50-150% because of employee turnover

[u/Leonidas927 → u/Jazzlike-Material801]

The signal analysis involved in these setups is inherently a complex matter. So by dumbing it down, do you mean that the system should show whatever the predictions are in simple language, as mentioned by u/TowardsTheImplosion in his comment?

[u/TowardsTheImplosion]

I will say I generally despise throwing AI at things.

But this is an industry ripe for disruption and applying machine learning to predictive failure models. Making a factory a dashboard that says 'gearbox X output shaft 2 has a 85 percent probability of a failed bearing in the next 3 months' or 'shaft B3 is showing eccentric motion that matches a belt wear issue with 60 percent probability' is an utter gold mine. The training data exists or can be gathered relatively easily. Anything other than 'sensor456 threshold exceeded by 5 percent'

I would not get into sensor or signal conditioning manufacturing. It is a complete PITA, volumes are relatively low, and you will never gain the institutional knowledge Wilcoxon, Piezotronics/Endevco or Kistler have.

Small providers can make a space for themselves if the product is compelling...and they might just get acquisition offers from BN or Wilcoxon.

DM me if you want. I have dealt with a massive amount of sensor hardware from all the major piezo sensor and signal conditioner manufacturers, and a lot of data loggers. More on the test side than the condition monitoring side, but the analysis is pretty similar.

[u/Leonidas927 → u/TowardsTheImplosion]

Yes, I agree. The sensor knowledge that these companies have accumulated over the years is very hard to achieve for anyone entering right now.

[u/indigoalphasix]

I've done this kind of thing on machining centers but it's super difficult for the shop folk to bother with. a little time upfront to figure some stuff to make a better finish or predict tool failure is a waste of time apparently. there's always an excuse where upfront 'wasted time' is of more value than downtime and scrap due to breakage.

still, i would think it would have to be literally the easiest software in the world for my current place to even consider.

i think there's room for large scale 24/7 mfg's to implement though and they should. small shop's -not so much.

[u/elchurro223]

Has anybody ever had luck with these systems actually saving money?