Condition monitoring – a glance behind the buzzword jungle

The Internet of Things – abbreviated IoT – has been following us around for about 10 years as an increasingly popular buzzword. Despite all the hype, especially in recent years, the essence behind the term is a functioning technology that has become indispensable in both the private and business sectors. Research institutes such as Statista predict that there will be over 75 billion networked devices in the year 2025. So, we are talking about a substantial number of "things" that collect numerous, sometimes simple, sometimes more complex data and information. This opens up many opportunities for those who recognize the potential. The focus continues to be on ROI as well as helpful, everyday use cases in the business world. In this context, let's take a look at the term condition monitoring – what are the different levels of meaning behind this buzzword and what are condition monitoring solutions all about?

💭 Condition monitoring stands for the continuous measurement and recording of various environmental or equipment parameters, such as room temperature and air quality, volume, lighting, equipment temperatures, fill levels, and so on. These values serve as physical indicators to better understand an environment or to determine a machine condition as precisely as possible.

🏭 In the industry sector, which is becoming increasingly important for the IoT world in general, condition monitoring offers companies the chance to understand machines precisely and to record detrimental changes, such as signs of deterioration, as well as to be able to coordinate machine maintenance more efficiently. This very relevant topic is commonly referred to as Predictive Maintenance. Since monitoring is done in real time, it is able to react in time to emergencies and take appropriate safety precautions. Consequently, downtime can either be completely avoided, or at least minimized; furthermore, both machine efficiency and overall safety are promoted. A more typical use case of IoT and condition monitoring, however, is the intelligent office building – or Smart Office – which today is no longer a pipe dream, but rather a common reality. Especially during the coronavirus pandemic, we have learned to pay closer attention to environmental data, such as specific indoor air quality. Condition monitoring is now happening in schools and universities and those educational institutions spend considerable sums of money to ensure the safety of their students. Who would have bet even 10 bucks on this rapid development in 2019?

🤓 So the scope of condition monitoring is sufficiently broad that there is also a high demand for the making and optimizing of intelligent condition monitoring solutions. In the industrial environment, these solutions – of which there are several on the market today – are capable of analyzing potential faults, finding the causes of problems, and offer the chance to ensure the maximum service life of a machine. This guarantees a convincing ROI, saving costs as well as energy and raw materials. However, good condition monitoring solutions are actually also indispensable in the smart office sector, as well as, the condition monitoring of rooms in educational institutions or hospitals.

🔥 Let's cut to the chase. In industrial applications, condition monitoring enables precise fault identification, preventive action in the sense of Predictive Maintenance, a reduction in downtimes, the optimization of maintenance intervals, and overall ensures improved reliability in production. In the smart office and comparable areas of application, Condition Monitoring is the invisible companion for the smooth running of everyday activities –even when no airborne viruses are endangering health. Numerous studies, produced before 2020, show just how damaging poor indoor air quality can be for the concentration of office workers and students.

Condition monitoring with Paessler

Since 1997, Paessler as a monitoring company represents excellence, innovative mindset and a clear focus on customer needs and wishes. With both Paessler PRTG and some new, exciting IoT solutions, we can confidently take on many condition monitoring challenges. If you are interested in details, or already wish to monitor a specific undertaking, simply get in touch with us.