GE Digital’s new SmartSignal Predictive Maintenance Software Solution Features “Time-to-Action

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2021-05-04 14:27:00

 GE Digital today announced updates to its SmartSignal predictive maintenance software solution that helps industrial companies proactively predict, diagnose, forecast, and prevent equipment failures. SmartSignal is available as a standalone software product or as an integrated component of the GE Digital Asset Performance Management (APM) software solution. New features include unique time-to-action analytics to forecast when a malfunction may occur, improved visualization and analysis tools, and continued expansion of the Digital Twin Analytics and Content Catalog covering more than 300 industrial equipment classes across manufacturers.

GE Digital SmartSignal has been a leading predictive maintenance software solution across industries for nearly two decades, with continuous investment in analytics breadth and innovation. While other solutions may provide only a general indication of a problem, SmartSignal diagnoses the cause and severity of the issue and determines the required timeframe for remediation.  SmartSignal customers can also benefit from GE Digital’s Industrial Managed Services for remote monitoring, alerting, and remediation guidance.

New Time-to-Action Forecasting

The new time-to-action analytics forecast when an equipment anomaly will actually reach an alarm limit and require immediate remediation. This information allows reliability and maintenance engineers to accurately prioritize and schedule corrective actions to keep operations and equipment running. Beyond helping assure zero unplanned downtime, SmartSignal now helps reduce reactive work and optimize Operations & Maintenance (O&M) scheduling.

“The time-to-action analytic adds a new dimension to GE Digital’s APM capabilities,” said Joe Perino, LNS Research Analyst. “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 problem diagnosis provides an important benefit toward optimizing maintenance activities while avoiding downtime.”

Enhanced visualization, analysis, and APM integration

SmartSignal customers with on-premises software installations will now have enhanced thin client visualization and analysis tools on par with cloud-based solutions. Expanded features include new charting capabilities, analysis overlays, and an updated case management interface.  On-premises users can also now seamlessly integrate SmartSignal events and data into the rest of the APM suite, allowing full leverage of APM features like policy management, asset health management, action management, and end-to-end O&M workflows.

An added feature of the newest version of SmartSignal is its ability to be accessed by tablets and smart phones. This empowers the modern industrial worker to manage critical assets, systems, and data from anywhere with remote capabilities and personal-based workflows proven in real industrial settings. 

A Fortune 50 Oil & Gas customer who has been monitoring their global fleet of assets for more than a decade noted, “The enhanced analysis tools will help us to rapidly investigate early warnings, promote cloud-based monitoring scalability within our organization, and can be leveraged for better teaming. The new features also help to organize user access at a corporate level and ensure program compatibility to our internal security protocols.”

New Industrial Managed Services Offering

Many SmartSignal customers take advantage of GE Digital’s Industrial Managed Services to continuously monitor plant equipment via SmartSignal and function as an extension of their reliability teams. Industrial Managed Services provides 24x7 asset monitoring, issue triage and notification, remediation guidance, analytics management, and strategy consulting.

A new inclusive service option also provides and manages the SmartSignal software itself, eliminating the need for a customer to own or operate the software directly. This new simple and economical service can deliver the benefits of plant-wide predictive maintenance to virtually any organization. Today, the GE Digital Industrial Managed Services organization monitors thousands of assets and has saved customers more than $1.6B in avoided mechanical and production losses in 15 years of operation.

Digital Twin Analytics and Content

SmartSignal Digital Twins are built on years of GE expertise in industrial manufacturing, operations, service, and software. The growing Digital Twin catalog covers more than 320 common industrial assets, providing predictive, diagnostic, and forecasting analytics. Standard analytic blueprints for rotating, fixed, electrical, and mobile equipment classes are rapidly trained to create accurate machine learning analytics tailored for each monitored asset. These analytics leverage a wealth of asset class intelligence including known failure modes, instrumentation inputs, operating context, engineering specifications, and GE subject matter expertise.

“Today’s industrial companies are challenged to deliver improved profitability and flexibility,” said Linda Rae, General Manager of GE Digital’s Power Generation and Oil & Gas business. “Digital Twin predictive analytics technologies in SmartSignal enable teams to optimize equipment reliability, improve O&M efficiency, and deliver ROI through decreased equipment downtime and improved operations.”

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