Using machine data to prevent failure

INFORMATION STORED IN THE SMART electronics on board your forestry machine can be used to help prevent expensive breakdowns and keep equipment working.

Gough Cat’s Darren Sandford told last month’s Harvet TECH 2017 conference in Rotorua that with the right information and planning, most equipment repairs can be predicted and carried out in advance of failure. This work would be scheduled to suit the contractor so that it doesn’t interfere with busy harvesting operations.

Darren has recently been appointed to the new position of General Manager, Digital & Technology, at Gough Cat with the aim of developing ways to utilise the mass of information available to help customers improve their businesses.

He told the conference that today’s forestry machines now process and store huge amounts of information, which he refers to as a “data lake that can be mined” to provide opportunities for actions that will save owners time and money.

Caterpillar has developed methods, using data science algorithms that run on a powerful suite of proprietary technology to filter that huge lake of information to focus on what can be used to best effect. And Gough Cat is planning to use that service here in New Zealand, but not just for Caterpillar owners, it will be able to do it for any brand, through a service it calls Cat Connect.

“The information stored in your machine is there waiting to be mined,” says Darren. “We can filter out the noise to predict future events.”

He points out that each machine is unique in some way because of the way it is being used by the operator, the terrain where it is working and even the weather conditions. That causes parts to wear at different rates. Data collected from the machines will be able to identify issues that will help technicians develop a plan for them.

Darren says the aviation industry has been using this approach for some time, which it calls ‘repair before failure’. It’s already being using for equipment in the mining industry and he says forestry needs to embrace it.

He pointed to examples of machines that are being operated with this new service approach that have 16,000 hours on the clock and never had a breakdown.

“We are still carrying out repairs to those machines, but ahead of when there would have been a failure and we do it at time that is convenient to the customer and we are using the data to do it – and saving them money,” he adds.

“Without figuring in lost production, failure repairs typically run at three times the costs of before-failure repairs.

“If this industry is to progress you really need to embrace this data and make use of it.”

NZL