Chemicals and plastics manufacturer
In chemicals and plastics, a granulator and its production environment under watch
Granulator
- Vibrationof the granulator, continuously
- Temperatureand workshop humidity, continuously
- LTE-Mno access to the site network
The scope
What is measured
- Sector
- Chemicals and plastics
- Instrumented machine
- Granulator
- Measured quantities
- Granulator vibration
- Temperature
- Humidity
- CO₂
- Air quality
- Detected events
- Production time and speed drift
- Shocks, micro-stops and stoppages
- Incorrectly fitted tool
- Failure flagged by trends
- Temperature and humidity deviations in the workshop
- Achieved result
Production time, shocks, stoppages and tool fitting followed on the granulator, a broken knife traced to its cause, and the production environment under control. What the measurement asked of the site IT network: 0 access requested. The unit reports over LTE-M, on its own SIM card.
The deployment
Control points
Equipment : Granulator
What is measured : The Sybox fitted on the granulator, continuous vibration monitoring.
What it showed : The curve carries production time, shocks, stoppages and tool fitting; it is what traced a broken knife back to a metal fragment.
Equipment : Production environment
What is measured : The Sybox’s built-in sensors.
What it showed : Temperature and humidity affect the chemical reactions during production: following them means better control of the process.
Failures are no longer found at standstill, and the process is followed together with its production environment.
Reading still to come
This deployment has no published figures yet: stoppages avoided, micro-stops counted, production time before and after the alert. The commissioning date and the observation period are missing too.
Those values exist on the customer’s side and must be approved by them before publication. This site publishes no gain figure without a source; the panel will stay as it is until then.
In operation
What it changed
- Failures are no longer found at standstillSpeed drift and micro-stops give warning before production stops.
- An alert now watches for breakageThe risk identified on the knives has its own alert.
- An incorrectly fitted tool no longer goes unnoticed
- The process is followed with its conditionsTemperature and humidity are read alongside production, where they weigh on the reactions.
On a granulator running continuously, a failure used to be found once the machine had stopped: nothing said, before the breakage, that a part was suffering. And in chemicals, workshop temperature and humidity weigh on the reactions during production.
The installation needed no wiring into the machine and no access to the site IT network: the Sybox sends its readings over the cellular network.