As plant infrastructure ages, equipment failures cause more and more unplanned downtime. The ARC Advisory Group estimates that 5% of production in North America is lost to unplanned downtime. Wireless makes it economically feasible to monitor many more pieces of plant infrastructure - not just the few deemed critical.

While leading manufacturers fully understand the value of predictive maintenance, until now the challenge has been the sheer impracticality of installing sensors on every piece of aging infrastructure. Real-world installations have demonstrated that self-organizing wireless networks provide a 90% reduction in installation cost compared to wired sensors, knocking down the barrier to widespread deployment of condition monitoring equipment.

Motor Condition Monitoring

A few simple measurements can provide an extremely accurate picture of motor health. The challenge has not been taking measurements or knowing what to do with the information, but finding an economical way to reach motors scattered around a facility. Self-organizing wireless mesh networks are ideally suited to gathering bits of valuable data from every corner of the plant.

SmartMesh-enabled Essential Insight from GE Energy is designed to address essential assets by augmenting permanent monitoring and hand-held portable monitoring strategies, allowing reliable and affordable condition monitoring where conventional technology has reached its limits.

Corrosion Detection

Aging pipelines and tanks have become a major problem in the oil and gas industry. Monitoring corrosion using manual processes is extremely costly, time consuming, and unreliable. A network of wireless corrosion sensors can be economically deployed to reliably identify issues before they become catastrophic failures.

Rohrback Cosasco Systems, the market leader in corrosion monitoring products and services for process industries, addresses the needs of today's critical infrastructure with the SmartMesh-enabled RCS Microcor Wireless Transmitter, which enables rapid communication of corrosion rate data, extending overall asset life and providing peace of mind with respect to potential environmental mishaps caused by corrosion.