We can identify all major process and equipment failures on all critical rotating and non-rotating equipment across all OEMs--in all industries with critical equipment. For example, Entergy spoke of its “Big Catch” worth $15-$35 million in POWER mag; Mirant saved $1 million in a single plant in its first month of deployment; TransAlta improved a plant’s availability to its highest level in history; KCP&L avoided failures across its fleet. Oil & Gas Product News discusses three sample SmartSignal catches.

 

SmartSignal…

• recognizes that every piece of equipment is unique

• uniquely builds models for and detects problems for each individual piece of equipment, thus providing the earliest and most accurate detection of equipment and process problems

•  is protected by over 40 patents

• is based on 100’s of millions of hours of experience

• is proven on 1000’s of assets in the power gen, oil & gas, mining, aviation, and pulp and paper industries

• is easy to use: no PhD required

• detects the broadest range of equipment problems across the widest variety of assets and failure modes

• works on all types of critical rotating, non-rotating, and processing equipment—any model of any equipment from any OEM--across all major industries

• uses existing imperfect instrumentation, tools, and infrastructure

• provides precise, accurate, unambiguous, and operationally relevant notifications of impending problems

• provides diagnostics and prioritizations of the problems

• even can identify failed sensors and adjust its models to accommodate them until they are repaired  

• SmartSignal also provides all the services you need to deploy and maintain our solutions quickly and easily—at one plant or across an entire fleet. Deployment is flexible—turnkey, customer-operated, or a hybrid.

 

SmartSignal provides warning of equipment failure earlier than and more accurately than other alternatives—and, unlike OEMs, it can monitor a wide range of critical equipment across a plant, beyond turbines, across all OEMs.

Mike Rutledge, of Salt River Project, explained: “The difference is, and I’ve been involved with the Siemens Power Diagnostic Center, that SmartSignal is another level of technology greater than what you get from the other sources (GE and Siemens) in that SmartSignal takes in more sensor data to predict a problem or failure. My experience with these sources (OEMs) is that they’re looking at more individual signals and variances in individual parameters as opposed to looking at a system and the effect of all the outside influences on that system.” Hear more...

Robert Peltier, Editor-in-Chief of POWER magazine, said: “The important difference is that SmartSignal alerts occur much earlier than the plant’s standard supervisory systems alarm setting would, giving operators more time to react when a critical event occurs.”

As Ron Kolz, Vice President of OSIsoft, said:

“We’re happy to have SmartSignal as a partner. They take advantage of our infrastructure. We handle the plumbing….and then they deliver this high-value application. SmartSignal is a great partner because their application saves customers millions of dollars. For us to be successful, we need to have partners in our ecosystem who can add high-value applications. That’s what SmartSignal does.” Hear more...

SmartSignal and OSIsoft work hand-in-hand as strategic partners; we seamlessly integrate the SmartSignal solution with OSIsoft PI™—and increase the value of your PI investment. SmartSignal works on top of PI—in over 300 PI installations worldwide—to add predictive analytics and eliminate equipment failure.

SmartSignal optimizes PI by analyzing, in real-time, your mountains of PI sensor data to detect early signs of equipment problems. We identify the “needles in the haystack” in the PI data—the impending problems—and notify you of these issues ONLY. This saves you untold hours of searching data for problems and reacting to false alarms, and it increases the productivity of your maintenance staff.

SmartSignal creates personalized, empirical models of each piece of critical equipment across all known loads and ambient conditions.

Then, in real time, for each piece of equipment, SmartSignal captures snapshots of all the signals from PI. It compares the snapshots created for an asset to the asset’s unique fingerprint. In doing so, the results are normalized for operational load and ambient conditions. This means that any normal variation is removed from the analysis, and any remaining variation is abnormal. If one or more of the observations does not fit the model signature for an extended period of time, SmartSignal logs it to the SmartSignal WatchList, which is an exception-based list of all developing equipment and process problems. Based upon the persistence and pattern of fingerprint deviations, SmartSignal then provides the intelligence to detect, diagnose, and prioritize developing problems well before they occur.

 Here’s a sampling of what they say:

“SmartSignal lets us know what repairs need to be made before they become full-blown problems.”


Joe Milton, EEFD Manager
Reliant Energy

“Before, it was like driving without a speedometer.”

Martin Catka
DTE Energy
As published in Control Engineering


See more customer quotes throughout the website.

SmartSignal customers see quick value, as SmartSignal even detects sensor problems, often during the implementation process. Mike Rutledge, of SRP, said : “We started finding sensor issues right away—immediately, really.” Typically, a plant sees a ROI within 3-9 months, and continued value every day. 
 

Phil Flesch of SmartSignal explained recently:  “I think we typically will use about three to five man days of the site’s time to ask questions about the equipment, to collect the data, to validate some of the sensors, build the models, and put them online.”

SmartSignal will save you significant time. SmartSignal analyzes infrastructure data for you and notifies you of problems—allowing your staff to focus on resolving the issues instead of analyzing the data.

SmartSignal allows plants to optimize maintenance planning to save time.  

With SmartSignal, you change your unplanned maintenance to planned. You don’t fix what’s not broken, and you increase your maintenance intervals.   

Yes. SmartSignal can model any equipment that has a real-time connection to operating data. SmartSignal currently monitors equipment for power generation (steam-fossil, combined-cycle, wind, nuclear, and hydro), oil & gas (upstream, midstream, downstream), mining trucks, diesel engines, aircraft engines, and pulp and paper. Please click here for a list of representative customers.

We can monitor any and all pieces of sensored equipment. The amount of equipment monitored in plants varies greatly, depending on the number of units within the plants and the size of the units. A typical steam-fossil plant deployment includes: steam turbines, generators, condensers,  boiler feed pumps, fans, air heaters, pulverizers, feed water heaters, and balance-of-plant pumps. We also protect environmental equipment, such as SCRs, wet and dry scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, baghouses, and ammonia chillers.

See our site's specific industry pages to learn more.

SmartSignal, through our in-house Availability and Performance Center, can provide complete services, including deployment and model maintenance. SmartSignal also works with our customers to organize, track, and update equipment health information in the SmartSignal SmartTracking system. 

Yes.  You can host and monitor a SmartSignal solution yourselves, or you can utilize our full-service capabilities through our in-house Availability and Performance Center.  

SmartSignal does both a Value Analysis and a Test Drive with you to verify our benefit in your particular environment prior to purchase. Also, some customers purchase a SmartSignal solution for one or a few plants or assets prior to expansion. We work with you to identify and confirm our value before you invest in SmartSignal.

We have a great set of customers who are more than happy to provide references for us and talk to you about how they successfully use SmartSignal to improve their performance and bottom line.  In fact, we ask all prospective customers to speak with references. Please contact us for more information. 

Please go to our Information Request page to submit your questions. Or, feel free to contact our Vice-President, Sales, directly. He’s Bob Andrews at randrews@smartsignal.com and 630-820-4002.