Time-to-Action provides forecasts of when equipment anomalies will occur, preventing expensive shutdowns and last-minute repairs.
GE Digital, a subsidiary of General Electric specializing in industrial software and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) services recently announced numerous updates to its SmartSignal predictive maintenance software. Aside from across-the-board improvements in the software’s UI and back-end tweaks, the standout among these upgrades is the time-to-action prognosis model that will allow users to accurately forecast upcoming maintenance needs, enabling them to avoid costly shutdown times and disruptive emergency measures.
SmartSignal helps detect and prevent emerging equipment failures and is available as a stand-alone software product or as part of GE Digital’s Asset Performance Management (APM) software bundle. It is also responsible for addressing APM’s asset reliability management. With its use of digital twin analytics and a full maintenance toolset, SmartSignal can improve operational reliability and provide more operational efficiency by minimizing unscheduled downtime.
What Sets SmartSignal Apart from Other Asset Performance Management?
SmartSignal’s predictive analytics provide an early detection of pending issues for hundreds of different types of common industrial assets, with attention directed to the uniqueness of each piece of machinery. Its digital analytics can identify the probable causes of maintenance issues, as well as suggest operations and maintenance workflow alternatives to maximize assets.
The new addition to SmartSignal, time-to-action analytics, provide forecasts of when an equipment anomaly will reach an alarm limit and require immediate action. Equipped with this knowledge, operational managers and maintenance engineers can optimize maintenance prioritization and scheduling to keep operations running with a cohesive workflow plan in place. The deployment and use of these analytics allow for virtually zero unplanned downtime, reducing reactive work and optimizing operations.
“With diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive, and now forecasting analytics, equipment maintenance activities can be defined, prioritized, and scheduled by actual operational risk windows. Adding a time factor to the problem diagnosis provides an important benefit toward optimizing maintenance activities while avoiding downtime,” noted Joe Perino, an LNS Research analyst.
Time-to-action provides additional depth to GE Digital’s APM maturity hierarchy, where operations and maintenance (O&M) management evolves from merely ad hoc reactive modes of maintenance to more advanced operational models that allow for prescriptive and predictive maintenance that is based on real-time and historical asset data with recommendations made based on machine learning.
SmartSignal can be deployed on a cloud subscription basis, as on-premises software, as a turnkey service, or as an integrated component of the full GE Digital APM software package. SmartSignal goes beyond analytics and provides diagnostics and suggestions such as alternative plans of addressing an issue, which are bolstered by the captured and generated analytics.
Training Digital Twins to Inform Engineers of Action Plans
GE’s digital twins are not only digital representations of a piece of machinery combined with analytics; they also come in multitudes—there are many digital twins running for each piece of equipment. Those are further informed by historical and real-time performance data from that particular piece of equipment, as well data from other deployments of the same technologies and their digital twin data.
This results in a robust amount of trained information that can then inform lead engineers on alternative plans of action, their associated downtimes, as well as the real-time cost that each of those suggestions will incur, both long- and short-term. To recap, the time-to-action forecast can flag potential operational issues ahead of time, provide a prognosis, and support the suggestions it makes (with costs, the probabilities of failure, time lines and even confidence scores for its own findings). The confidence score is the likelihood that the digital twin will be assigned to its own findings, so that O&M managers are fully equipped with the necessary knowledge to inform their decisions.
Out-of-the-box digital twin blueprints can be rapidly trained and deployed per asset. This, combined with real-time IoT information connectivity allows the time-to-action system to monitor sensor status and continually update its data model for optimal results. The SmartSignal Digital Twin Analytics Catalog currently covers over 300 of the most common industrial assets, with more being added every day. The twins leverage GE’s world-class expertise in operations, service, industrial manufacturing and software offerings to provide predictive, diagnostic and forecasting analytics for its users.
Digital twins begin as standard analytic blueprints for a number of equipment types and classes (such as rotating, fixed, mobile and electrical) and are then put on an accelerated training program to create machine learning analytics specific to each piece of monitored equipment. These analytics incorporate real-time asset information with GE’s subject-matter expertise, instrumentation inputs, known failure modes, and engineering specifications to provide an information-rich environment where informed decisions are made.
Bringing Everyone the APM Features Typically Reserved for Cloud Users
The newest SmartSignal update allows users, who have opted for on-premises software installations, access to enhanced client visualizations of its digital twins and analysis tools that are closer in robustness to the powerful solutions that were previously only possible within cloud-based services. These expanded features allow for analysis overlays, new charting and data visualization capabilities, as well as an updated case management interface. On-premises customers can also use SmartSignal events and data to integrate them with the rest of GE Digital’s APM suite to use the data beyond its immediate needs, with applications in policy management, asset health management, action management and end-to-end O&M workflows.
GE Digital’s presentation showcases the time-to-action predictive analytics that allow managers to understand when issues will occur before they happen, enabling them to take action to address the issues that may arise without an extended workflow disruption.
The newest version of SmartSignal allows users to access the system with tablets and smartphones off-site. This enables them to manage its assets, systems and data flows from anywhere in the world. Users can be notified about early warnings, and information is disseminated within user groups to provide more collaborative work within the group and sharing of relevant information to all pertinent systems users. SmartSignal’s newest feature allows local admins to organize levels of access within an organization, thus ensuring a proper flow information and providing additional levels of information security for users.
Many of GE Digital’s SmartSignal customers opt into the company’s Industrial Managed Services to actively monitor their plant equipment and assets, thus extending the availability of a company’s reliability teams. GE Digital Industrial Managed Services currently monitors thousands of assets around the world. It has saved customers nearly $2 billion in avoided mechanical and production losses over the past 15 years.
Included within the Industrial Managed Services is 24/7 asset monitoring, issue triage, analytics management and strategy consulting. Industrial Managed Services comes in a range of packages and offerings, with a new all-inclusive package that provides a full-service option where GE Digital manages SmartSignal directly on the customer’s behalf, thus eliminating the need for internal operators and allowing for virtual plant-wide monitoring to organizations of any size. GE Digital’s customers can leverage the company’s world-class expertise with real-time data to help ensure operational efficiency.
