February 17, 2022 · 4 min read
Do you want to know what it takes to start reducing unplanned downtime with AiSight? Our onboarding process is straightforward; you’ll start finding faults and reducing downtime in a matter of weeks. Read on to learn more.
Do you want to implement AiSight’s predictive maintenance solution in your business? Great choice! But you may be wondering, what happens next?
Thus begins our onboarding process. This is a rewarding and streamlined process, during which we’ll learn everything we can about your current reality, advise you on what you need, train you on how to use our system, install our sensors, run a validation phase, and monitor the results. When it’s complete, you’ll have already reduced unplanned downtime and saved money.
The process starts with a call. This is where you’ll meet your greatest asset at AiSight: your customer success manager. They will be your personal contact and guide you through the entire onboarding process and beyond.
The Onboarding Call
On this call, you’ll discuss your goals with your customer success manager. This is more than a conversation about what you want from AiSight—this is a conversation about how things currently stand. The status quo is important; we want to know what works and what doesn’t work in your facility—your high-maintenance machines, your machines that have recently failed, your current maintenance practices, and how you’re currently tracking maintenance and downtime.
From there, we can start to set up key performance indicators. To complete a successful evaluation phase, we need to measure the outcome. Establishing a starting point is necessary to see the changes brought by implementing our system. And, with these measurements in hand, we can let you know what to expect from the validation phase.
Discussing your current setup is also key to determining the best use-cases for our solution. We want to deploy in places where you’re going to see maximum return on investment, fast. That means addressing existing pain points and monitoring high-maintenance machines.
To get a complete picture through validation, we recommend deploying at least 20 Aion sensors. In a recent case, we installed 40 Aions on gearboxes and belt drives throughout a line. These machine parts are prone to misalignment and looseness, problems that lead to breakdowns if undetected. That makes them great candidates for the validation phase—and monitoring in general.
Preparation and Installation
Once we know where to best deploy our solution, we can begin preparation. We’ll ship the sensors and cabling. Our installation technicians will survey your facility to advise on the best mounting positions, then secure the power supply and connectivity for the sensors. If WiFi is not available, we can set up IOT gateways.
Training is also a part of the preparation phase. We want you to get the most out of our system, both in the validation phase and beyond. That’s why we provide training on how to use the dashboard, and advice on installing sensors. Ease of installation is a unique advantage of our system; once you begin rollout, your maintenance team may consider self-installation. In order to obtain accurate results right from the start, however, our experienced installation technicians will perform the initial installation and show your team how it is done.
With preparation completed, we only need a day to install our sensors.
Initial Analysis
The initial analysis begins as soon as our sensors come online. Once operating, our system’s AI trains itself to detect anomalies in your machines’ behavior. But the initial analysis provides additional depth of detection: it finds defects immediately. This saves the AI from normalizing unhealthy vibration patterns. It also means that our system begins delivering on day one.
During the initial analysis, the vibration experts on our data-science team will perform an in-depth analysis of the vibration patterns coming through the AiSight Dashboard. This will reveal any early-stage faults. As the validation phase continues, you’ll be able to watch the abnormal vibration patterns amplify as the problems worsen. If this process is allowed to continue, they’ll trigger an alert from the dashboard.
In a recent case, the initial analysis from our 40 sensors on gearboxes and belt drives revealed 7 early-stage faults, each either looseness or gearbox defects. Three weeks later, one of the sensors detected an increase in vibrations; the dashboard issued an alert. The plant’s maintenance team, forewarned of this outcome, was able to repair the machine during scheduled maintenance.
Continued Validation
After the initial analysis, the validation phase continues. Our sensors will monitor your equipment; our dashboard will generate results and issue alerts. To get a complete picture of machine health, we recommend a six-month validation phase. Sometimes the results make themselves known so quickly and emphatically that we can move on to rollout sooner.
Your AiSight customer success manager will be available at your convenience this entire time, and will check in every two to three weeks. Once the validation phase is completed, your customer success manager will compare the outcome of the validation phase to the information we gathered in the initial onboarding phase, generate KPIs, a time to ROI, and see how the results have aligned with your goals.
Wider rollout can begin whenever you’re ready. Any help you need with rollout or integration is available; your customer success manager will stay close through rollout, and continue to check in regularly. From there, the future without unplanned downtime is yours.
If you’d like to learn what happens next, check out our future articles on the rollout process: 5 Steps to Successfully Implement a Digitization Project. If you want to get started now, schedule a demo.
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Phone: +49 (0) 30 40363399
Website: https://aisight.de
