The 6 Sensors for Predictive Maintenance That Optimize Repair Timelines

Predictive maintenance has probably been around as long as someone first said: “That’s going to break soon.” From a simple refrigerator in a single family home to complicated industrial equipment supporting thousands of dollars of infrastructure, predictive maintenance is the silent hero behind the scenes.

How does predictive (also called condition-based maintenance from time to time) work? What does it rely on today? And how can businesses improve their predictive maintenance strategy? We cover all of these questions in this article.

Predictive maintenance relies heavily on sensors

In the past, maintenance, in general, relied on a lot of tedious, manual work and checks. Predictive maintenance was no different. Today, it relies on sensors in three major areas:

• early fault detection
• failure detection
• and CMMS integration

Here’s a breakdown of each area and how the sensors speed up the maintenance process for you and your company.

Early fault detection

When a small (but not catastrophic) fault is about to occur, employees can’t always see or find it in time. Industrial grade sensors pick up on these faults within milliseconds, alerting administrators as fast as possible.

Failure detection

If a failure is detected, sensors can alert administrators and sometimes retroactively disable machines. In many cases, this can happen before the failure actively starts, preventing company downtime and potential employee injury.

CMMS integration

In order for the above two things to happen, you’ll need something that integrates with your user-facing UI. Thankfully, sensors work well with many CMMS systems. If they do not, your CMMS system is probably near the end of its usable lifespan.

What does predictive maintenance look like when a company does not use sensors or decides that they are not worth the investment?

Predictive maintenance without sensors

Modern sensors are a fairly new invention. How did people and companies manage without sensors and why shouldn’t companies use them today?

The short answer is that sensors provide a better way that simply was not available in the past. Here are the longer answers and why they don’t work for modern companies.

Consistent manual checks

The first and usually primary way that companies used to maintain their equipment was by constant manual checking. Smaller companies still do this. However, it simply doesn’t scale to the needs of larger companies in any industry.

Lengthy problem detection

The processes to detect and prevent problems used to be much longer. The manual checks mentioned were generally the only safeguard against problems happening. When they did happen, it took a long time to figure out what was going on, depending on the situation.

Non-existent early fault detection

As a result of the needed lengthy problem detection process, early fault detection didn’t exist for most systems. If companies were lucky, some employees would know the systems well enough to guess when faults were developing. But that’s highly situational and doesn’t provide sufficient help for companies today.

Expensive expert analysis

Finally, when something did go wrong, companies needed to go to specialists to solve the situation. The alternative for larger companies was to keep an expert on staff. In either case, the expert analysis was expensive and time-consuming.

Today, sensors can solve almost all of these problems, sometimes even before they start. What does predictive maintenance look like today, sensors and all?

Predictive maintenance with sensors

Predictive maintenance works with sensors in two main ways: employee engagement and CMMS integration. The first is how the sensors work with people and the second is how the sensors work for your company. Here’s how.

Sensors and employee engagement

Employees engage with maintenance sensors in multiple different ways.

• By installing and setting up the sensors at the beginning on the equipment, such as a smart oven or assembly line
• Monitoring sensors, either remotely through a device or in person at the sensor unit in question
• Maintaining the sensors when they need it
• And making decisions when the sensors require it

Depending on the industry and the company in question, employees will have different ways of engaging with the sensor array.

Sensor detection and CMMS integration

How do the sensors integrate with a CMMS system? This is part of a company’s internal network, sometimes called the Internet of Things. In brief, the sensors connect to your CMMS solution and feed the data that they gather straight into your central database.

Different reports, findings, and issues can then be pulled from that database into easily distributed and read reports. In some cases, these reports can then go directly to the people who need to read them right away.

Now that we’ve covered what sensors can do and how they work for your company, let’s examine the most popular sensors in use today and how they work.

Six popular predictive maintenance sensors used today

The six most popular predictive maintenance sensors today are:

• Vibration
• Gas
• Humidity
• Temperature
• Security
• And pressure sensors

1. Vibration sensors

Vibration sensors, as their name implies, measure vibrations in and on sensitive equipment. They can be chiefly found on rotating pieces of machinery.

2. Gas sensors

Gas sensors monitor different levels of various gases. When they get too high or too long, these sensors kick in with programmed responses. These are fairly widespread throughout most industries.

3. Humidity sensors

Humidity sensors do more than sense the moisture of the air in general. Some sensors are so delicate that they can monitor how many grams of water are in the air.

4. Temperature sensors

Temperature sensors are fairly straightforward. HVAC systems are a great example of these sensors in action. Depending on the application, these sensors can be a huge help, particularly in the food service industry.

5. Security sensors

Security sensors are very diverse and have multiple applications. Alarms, motion sensors, GPS trackers and more all fall into this category. The biggest differences between them are usually where they are used.

6. Pressure sensors

Pressure sensors detect how much pressure is put on a machinery system or weight. Sometimes, when differences are detected, the sensors can change what the machine is doing. These are more specific as a rule than most of the other sensors.

UpKeep’s 4-step process for predictive maintenance with sensors

How does all this work for a company? Which sensors do you choose? And how are they installed?

UpKeep has a four-step process designed specifically so that you and your company get the best sensor array for your needs.

1. Choose sensors

Our qualified technicians bring years of experience to your business needs. After a thorough evaluation, we’ll help you find the sensors that work best for your business.

2. Place sensors

The next step is placing the sensors on your equipment and assets. We help by finding where these sensors best fit and are most accessible for you.

3. Connect sensors

Finally, our technicians will connect your new sensors to your UpKeep account, within minutes of the final install.

4. Save money, time, and keep workers safe.

And that’s it! Once everything is in place, you’re ready to use your brand new sensor array for predictive maintenance.

Best of all, you can try UpKeep for free. That way, you can make sure it will work for you and your company’s needs. Sign up for your free trial today.