BONUS: Predictive Maintenance: The Key to Replacing Unplanned Downtime with Personal Downtime (Sponsored by AssetWatch)

0:00Filling a form out is the least human thing we could possibly do with our time. So filling out things that produce data unnaturally, I feel like that is the most exciting thing. Welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour, the podcast where we get real about the latest trends and technologies impacting modern manufacturers. Manufacturing Happy Hour. Each week, we interview industry experts that are at the top of their craft and give you the tools, tactics, and strategies you need to take your career and your business to the next level. And now, your host, Chris Lukey. Hey folks, today's episode is all about condition monitoring and how to replace unplanned downtime with personal downtime.

0:52Our guests this week are from AssetWatch. AssetWatch eliminates unplanned downtime through end-to-end condition monitoring, AI-driven predictive maintenance, and more. We are joined by Dustin Moore and Patrick Karmichel as we cover vibration monitoring, predictive maintenance, the future of condition monitoring in the short and long term, and more in today's conversation. If you'd like to connect with our guests or learn more, make sure to head to the show notes page at manufacturinghappyhour.com. And with that, let's jump into a happy hour style conversation with Patrick and Dustin.

1:36Dustin, Patrick, a proper Friday afternoon podcast recording. and in the spirit of manufacturing happy hour in a time where we would typically probably be out having a beverage right now. I have to ask you each this question because you're in different parts of the country. So Patrick, let's head out to California first. If we were grabbing a drink in California, where would that be? What would we be having? You know, when I started making beer for real is when the microbrewery scene really popped. So that would have to be when I was in Carlsbad Village. We had a place called the bottle shop and it just always had whatever was was new and whatever was old and and worth worth having any time like for instance Pliny so that place was a go-to and it's it's about two blocks from the beach so you can walk to the beach if you want you can stand outside it's basically standing room only and there's a pizza port right next door so you can bring a pizza over it's a great place to just hang after work talk unwind and get any beer you want to to just crack one open So a lot of good times, a great place for somebody who likes a good beer.

2:44I mean, I used to live in San Francisco. I think I went to that bottle shop. I know for a fact I have been to Pizza Port in Ocean Beach many a times for a slice and an IPA. If I go back to San Diego anytime, that's usually one of the top spots on my list I want to hit up. So I know exactly where you're describing right now, Patrick. Awesome. So Dustin, let's say we're hanging out in Bowling Green, Kentucky. And I know I pitched it before as maybe we're watching a minor league baseball hot rods game. But that's the main thing I'm familiar with from Bowling Green. But I don't want to give you your answer.

3:26Where might we be hanging out having a beer? Well, my favorite place in town is a little place called Pub Bonova. It's a little sports bar. Got really, really good food. uh big screens all around and it's it's probably 50 tvs in the place uh beer's cold and uh i make a trip at least once a weekend there uh they got a they call it the slinger burger so it's basically like a hamburger patty uh it's over a bed of fries i think there's a piece of toast at the bottom of it it's got chili on it a fried egg there's a little bit of everything on there and And if you finish the whole plate, you definitely ain't hungry afterwards.

4:07So it's a pretty good food. Dustin, you're going to get a kick out of this. I'm a St. Louis guy originally. And the slinger is a famous breakfast item out there. So, yeah, hamburger patty, chili, an egg, some cheese. If I remember right, a slinger started because, you know, truck drivers wanted something that was a little breakfasty, a little dinnery. I might be getting the story wrong, but it's kind of this like, I mean, it's a delicious conglomeration. The chili, I think, is what really sets it apart. And it's wonderful to hear that there is a burger version of that in Bowling Green, Kentucky as well.

4:48Really good, really good. If you come this way, you got to check it out. Oh, I definitely will. Well, let's stay in Bowling Green for a second. I'm going to ask you both a version of this question. But Dustin, how do you talk about condition monitoring if you're having cold beer and eating a slinger burger? Like, how do you talk about it in candid 101 terms? A condition monitor to me is using different technologies and signals and, you know, trying to get an early indication of faults developing in your machine. I think the whole goal of it is to buy time. You know, you catch up in an early state.

5:29You recognize that. You report it. It gives the maintenance team time to plan. You know, whether it's maybe they need to order a motor and get it sitting on the shelf. It gives them time to play with. It allows them to look at the calendar, see when they'd have the opportunity to do maintenance work that's required to fix it. So, yeah, I think to me, that's the that's the name of the game is is one buying time and to identifying things in an early stage to where you recognize that and you can get to it at an early point where you minimize the damages to the equipment. Yeah, I'm glad you put that in a maintenance context.

6:09We'll get back to more of that here in a little bit. But Patrick, I've got two questions for you. The first one is pretty similar to what I just asked Dustin. You know, the manufacturing happy hour audience, you know, we're dealing with a lot of folks that are primarily in the manufacturing space. Our audience is familiar with condition monitoring. We're talking about vibration analysis, you know, in many ways. in candid terms, let's say we're hanging out there at Pizza Port or the bottle shop. I mean, what are we monitoring the vibration of when it comes to condition monitoring? Let's go there.

6:41Give us some examples of what that looks like, Patrick. Yeah, I'm just thinking about literally being at the bottle shop. If I was there and assuming I'm talking to people that may not actually even know what it's talking about, I would probably use a beer. Like, I didn't know if we're going to have something here, but I just in case was prepared. So I would look at this and I would say condition monitoring, it probably, you know, is associated with us as humans, right? We can only do so much. We can see, hear, smell things and touch things. And we only have so many fingers and hands. And as you are building and achieving great things within manufacturing environments, producing at scale, you need many fingers and many ears and many eyes on these things.

7:26And so condition monitoring is really about what are the tools to extend what was naturally already there. Vibration is hearing. Are we hearing things? Our ability to put your hand on something and touch it and say, this beer is pretty good. It's cold. I like it. You know, I crack it open and be like, you know, I pour it and say, you know, what's the head look like? But the truth is, when you have it in a bottle, you shouldn't do have this beer. but but i mean it's really about those things right and it's really it's really human you know that's how you use technology to be able to see hear or smell things that we would already wanted to do and someone like dustin can get in there because he's seeing it at scale across all of these assets across many facilities um he's able to look at that and say okay that's a problem that's that's a high temperature issue that's a gear mesh issue that's you know whatever it is so So that's how I would explain that.

8:18Yeah, excellent answer. And I'm actually going to go a step further because, Dustin, you were given a great example of this at the start. You were talking about condition monitoring in the context of predictive maintenance. So one more question for you, Patrick, and then, Dustin, I'm going to kick it back to you. I mean, how does predictive maintenance work, right? I know a lot of folks listening are familiar with it. It's a topic that has come up on the show more than a few times. but I'd love to hear your take on painting the picture of what this looks like. Yeah. I mean, for me, predictive maintenance means that you're looking at early warning signs.

8:56So a lot of this is around how you plan it so that you can catch things because you know that your process should dictate whether there's an issue and in advance take care of that. And other times you're looking at whether or not you want to address issues proactively in order to be able to know as you're continuing to develop. So if you're looking at vibration, temperature, electric, ultrasound, all these monitoring methods, it's about your ability to be able to plan so that you do not have unplanned downtime. And all of these tools and process really are designed specifically to mitigate that.

9:34You're going to have downtime, but it should be in your terms. Yeah. Now, Dustin, I'd love to hear from your thoughts. Can you tell us what predictive maintenance looks like in the context of a manufacturing facility? Let's go a little deeper, maybe paint a picture from your end. Yeah, so you hear the term preventative maintenance, and then you hear the term predictive maintenance. So preventative maintenance is more a calendar-based technique where you're lubricating your bearings every three months. You're changing your couplings out every so often. and you're checking the alignment once or twice a year on the motor-to-pump shaft alignment, where predictive maintenance and condition monitoring are more so looking at actual signals, and maybe you see early-stage symptoms of lubrication, and you're working more towards the conditions you're actually seeing.

10:33That's kind of the way I think of it. Yeah. What does what does good look like in the context of condition monitoring? Right. If I'm a manufacturer listening to this, I'd love to get your take, Dustin, as to, you know, what pretty good looks like. Maybe it's not perfect, but what do good best practices look like in the context of manufacturing? There's a lot of different aspects to that. but the moral of the story is you've got to start somewhere. You've got to start where you're at, you know, and you take a company that hasn't been doing this sort of stuff, you know, sometimes it takes a while to get to a point where it does look good to you.

11:16And we experience that on a daily basis. You know, you kind of meet maintenance teams where they're at. They're all in different parts of their journey. You get some that are pretty advanced. They may have vibration analysts on staff that are, you know, boots on the ground on site. And then you get you get some maintenance teams that are really inexperienced. And we do a whole lot of, you know, handholding and and teaching of best practices. So a lot of aspects to that. But, you know, overall, I think just starting somewhere, establishing good practices, you know, learning the benefits of properly installing stuff using laser alignment uh instead of just setting something up and straight edging it you're going to get longer life out of your equipment and and to me that's that's the measure of success you know when you you're starting to extend the life of your components and and uh it it ultimately you see that roi uh at the end of the day uh you've you've saved money you've prevented downtime losses things like that yeah yeah i think those are those are some great summaries right you're extending the life of equipment you're preventing the downtime inside of a facility let's go a layer deeper patrick i'm going to send this one to you because i think for some of the audience we've captured some things they're they're nodding along with us right they're like yep this all makes sense one thing i'd like to ask you patrick is like let's say what is the disconnect between you know enterprise level and what's going on on the plant floor and how does condition monitoring play into that?

12:56Yeah. So, I mean, for me, we see a lot of this. It's challenging because everyone has their goals and the enterprise goal is frequently associated with their shareholders, not necessarily how does a plant feel? What is the culture of that one facility and how are they operating effectively? And, And for condition monitoring at a facility level versus what it means at scale for the enterprise to get what they want to grow a business, these can be very different things. And so from an enterprise level, we're looking at the consistency across and repeatability across facilities. And if you're trying to shove that down the pipeline to facilities that to Justin's or are related to different kinds of maturity.

13:47They're all starting in different ways and they're all have their own cultures and they're all going to approach and leverage whatever knowledge or experience they have to start to take steps. And so the challenge is really that disconnect and where we've seen a lot of success really is around making sure the facility is never left behind. Facility is not the one that is understanding the value, what it means to be monitoring, not just collecting a mountain of data, you know, but giving, you know, the maintenance team clear and trusted action. They know what's wrong, what's urgent, and they know what to do next.

14:21And I think if you can, you know, plan repair instead of getting a surprise or a failure, you know, Conditioned Monitoring is doing a pretty good job using some of the methods that Dustin is referring to. But at an enterprise level, if they lose sight of the fact that they're never going to get that ultimate enterprise ROI or the data required to create greater decisions to improve total process and manufacturing, to improve OEE, all of these things that people desire to have, unless you actually facility by facility managed cultural change one step at a time. And you can't expect that someone's going to go and apply all the various forms of condition monitoring to be effective and to develop all the analytics to be predictive if they haven't just looked at critical assets and just done one thing really well.

15:05And I think that's really the challenge is have they done that first one thing? And I think the expertise that Dustin has here in looking at vibration temperature, this is an accepted reality. That's the standard. If you do that, a lot of our, you know, condition learning engineers say 60 % of the things that you're going to need to do, you're probably going to catch just by doing that one thing well. And if you haven't done that for critical assets, why are you talking about all these other things? Let's go do that first. Let's prove ROI and let's keep adding on more oil analysis, electrical, ultrasound, all of these great methods of monitoring to get maximum ROI of an asset.

15:42And I want to just have you repeat that, Patrick, just so the audience gets it. What is the one thing that they need to do really well, just very clearly? They need to support the individual facility for cultural change. Dustin I'm going to kick it over to you now so how do what's a best practice you would offer on supporting like a facility with the type of cultural change that's needed maybe from some of your experiences out in the field well the proof's in the pudding sometimes it's a hard case to sell and we've experienced that I mean it's you get some of these sites and they don't think there's a problem until they start seeing smoke or big temperature spikes, something like that.

16:36So one way we do it is we present the data in front of them and we'll analyze data right in front of them and kind of try to talk to where they can understand exactly what we're seeing, uh you know give them give them the reasons why we think it's this or that and then you know it's still a hard sell for a while but once they start seeing that you look at those trends and hey you you changed the bearing here and this level went from up here to down here and they see the results on their end too you know that bearing's running a lot cooler a lot smoother uh don't sound like it like it should so it's it's a process sometimes it happens pretty quickly and sometimes it it takes a little more showing results before you get them to come around.

17:25But like I said, we definitely meet all different types and we meet them where they're at. We work with them and try to get them to come around to a more proactive than reactive state of mind. Yeah, I'm curious, Dustin, one thing that you had mentioned, I believe when we first met a couple weeks ago, you had said you're working to replace unplanned downtime with personal downtime. And I think that quote really resonated with me in terms of what the whole point of, you know, predictive maintenance, condition monitoring ultimately is. So, Dustin, if you could explain that in a little more detail, I'd love to hear what you mean by replacing unplanned downtime with personal downtime.

18:17I'd love to hear it in your words. Absolutely. I spent a lot of my career hands-on, you know, in the field, boots on the ground, underground, thousand foot in a mines or outside in the hot sun working on something. And doing that type of service work, it's just uncanny how often it happens on the weekend or at Christmas or, you know, the most inconvenient time is when stuff decides to break. So, you know, part of the benefit of doing this, in addition to saving the company money for their production losses and giving the maintenance team more time to react is, is you get that early warning, you can plan your work instead of being at the mercy of when it decides to fail, which, like I said, is always on Christmas at midnight, you know.

19:07Yeah. Yeah. Patrick, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for us, this is a personal thing. You know, I grew up, you know, my father was in manufacturing facilities. And, you know, you just see these are people. And, you know, I think, you know, it's a great story that our CRO, you know, Brian Ratliff shared with the whole company a while back, one of our hands around his own personal experience with his own father and missing out an incredible part of his child's life, you know, had, you know, had he not been able to to get out of that facility you know during an unplanned event you know and it's just it's very personal I mean everything we do here is really personal.

19:46Patrick I'm going to lead off with you for this question I want to talk about what kind of the future of condition monitoring looks like I want to do this from like a long-term and a short-term perspective so Patrick from a What does the long-term future of condition monitoring look like? The long-term future, in our view, has really been there since the beginning. I think about our founder, Will Zell. And from the outset, it's always been, hey, this is an asset. And it's operating as effectively as it possibly can. What's the right mix of condition monitoring to get the most? How do you squeeze the most out of that orange?

20:28And then there's diminishing returns at some point. And the goal here, as technology involves, as our ability to monitor various conditions efficiently and have an appropriate monitoring mix, involves we're able to say we've fully maximized what's possible so that we can predict what's happening, react in a way, respond rather than react in a way that makes sense to ultimately maximize our planned uptime. Yeah, Dustin, I've got a couple questions for you. I'd actually like to ask you about the future of condition monitoring in short term. I think we've talked about modalities before. I'd love to get your take.

21:09Yeah, I think we're seeing a shift right now in the market where companies and the industry as a whole are seeing the value in using multiple modalities and signals. Uh, you know, every, every asset may not make sense to have electrical oil analysis and vibration all on it. Some may, you know, uh, but, but having those different technologies at your fingertips to use as tools, you know, you can make, uh, the best decision per asset to what's going to give you the most beneficial information. And you take an asset that's really critical. You use multiple signals on it. you can really get a holistic view of what's going on with that asset when you combine those multiple signals.

21:55So this condition monitoring realm, reliability realm, is with the advances of AI and data science, it's rapidly evolving. So that's kind of a short-term solution. But beyond that, it's evolving so quickly, it's hard to think very long term. You know, it's it's advancing so quickly in the short term that it's it's hard to look that far down the road. Well, one thing I also want to ask you about is and our audience is definitely an audience that understands these are tools that are helping us, empowering us. They're not replacing jobs. But Dustin, I feel like you've been in the position before where you've seen folks wonder.

22:42It's like, is this going to threaten my job, for example? You've had I think you've had this conversation pretty recently, actually. I'd love to hear where maybe that's the thought, but why you have been able to articulate that that's not actually the case. Yeah. And, you know, I've I've been in roles to where, you know, I could could see myself in those shoes where, you know, if this if somebody kept like asset watch come along, I'd be like, oh, man. here what what are they going to do with me but um one of the sites that i monitor now has a category three analyst on staff and uh me and him have become really good friends talk every day um on a daily basis we'll touch base around the equipment that that we're both monitoring and and you know combined uh collaborate around that but also we've become friends and he told me he said you know when you guys first come in here i felt really threatened and he said uh but he said at the time this is a really really big plant big cement plant he said at the time you know i was doing good to finish my routes uh on a every two months you know and he said there was a lot of stuff uh you know falling through the cracks uh you know i was being pulled to do mechanical work when i should have been doing my vibration routes and stuff like he said i was just going a thousand different directions and he said it didn't take me long to realize that that asset watch was the best thing that ever happened to me so he still got his emerson 2140 portable portable meter on hand and uh we work in conjunction so with with the asset watch software and platform um you know i let him know what is changing and then if there's deeper troubleshooting required he can take his portable meter out and and look into it uh but it's freed his time up to where he's he's able to balance fans, do laser alignments because he knows that he's got the safety net of asset watch in the background kind of monitoring the trends for him.

24:46Yeah, you know, Dustin, another question just popped into my mind, especially for groups that are listening to this out there thinking it's like, I know I need to be doing a better job with my condition monitoring. What is the number one thing or maybe a few applications that you see out there that should be monitored that aren't being monitored on a frequent basis right because we're there and by the way there are people across a variety of verticals and industries listening to this but you know there there are only so many different things that rotate uh in the space i'm very curious like i feel like something super critical like a turbine for example that's always going to have condition monitoring on it but i'm curious what some of the other things that should have it but don't might be?

25:33Well, it's just a matter of doing a criticality assessment at your site. Every site's got certain assets that's detrimental to operations. So that's the biggest thing is understanding what are my big players that if this goes down, it shuts operations down? Or what are the assets that I have that's going to take me four or five weeks lead time to get a spare um you know what is the assets that are really really uh high-end replacement cost you know so it's not necessarily a size thing or a machine specific thing it's you know there's some situations where a little small football size motor may be very very detrimental to you know it may be sending lubrication to that turbine you know so understanding the criticality of each machine is, you know, one of the first steps that a company should take in when they start to kind of build their reliability program out, you know, understand where our big players are.

26:36And that's where you really need to start with continuous monitoring. And you can expand out from there as you see fit. Awesome advice. Patrick, I'm going to ask you this question first, but Dustin, I'll I'll pass it to you as well. As we get towards the end of our conversation, what are you most excited about right now when it comes to the future, near future, long-term future of condition monitoring and predictive maintenance? You know, I think I take it back to the people. You know, I talk about those that are concerned about all the change happening right now, the concern of AI just two letters creating so much disruption.

27:20And the reality that this is nothing new. It's history repeating. There's always going to be new things, new ways to do things. It's always an adjustment. And for me, I'm excited about the fact that we get to be there during this transition. There's been some really, really challenging things that have never been to happen in manufacturing because it's a hard space to work. And, you know, who wants to fill out forms when you're sitting there in a hot place, you know, trying to manage an SOP and you're going to update your documentation so that you get the right data so that you can serve that up the chain and everybody gets new models, right, to make better decisions.

28:00That's really nice. But the cool thing about these tools and where we're going is that you can use your voice, you can use video. You can use the natural environment, things that are already happening to capture things in ways that make work less painful. And we're excited about figuring out how do we do that so that you can do the work you know you want to do well and just take these painful things that were never really human. Filling a form out is the least human thing we could possibly do with our time. You know, so filling out things that produce data unnaturally, I feel like that is the most exciting thing in a hard physical environment that we can, we get to partner in.

28:41And that's exciting to me. Yeah. Dustin, what are your thoughts? I thought Patrick had a really good answer there, but yeah, the, the, the AI, you know, data science has really, really changed the ball game. So, you know, I think that, that above all else, we want to continue to look at the customer's needs and, and improvise and form our products in a way that it's meeting those needs. And, you know, one thing that's really exciting to me is my brain is just constantly churning at, you know, combining multiple signals of technology and, you know, intertwining that in data science, you know, how insightful that can be.

29:26So very excited with where we're going in the future with those sort of things. Well, I have one question that, Patrick, I'll ask you this one, because this is actually more of a brand question. It's an Asset Watch question. I mean, I just feel like you guys are making waves in this industry recently. And I'm imagining there's some folks listening to this that are learning about Asset Watch for the first time. So, you know, can you give us like a quick background on the story of, you know, how Asset Watch got started and, you know, how quickly you've kind of risen in the industry? I think that would be helpful for a lot of people that, you know, have spent the past 30 minutes getting to know you guys for the first time.

30:11Patrick? Yeah, it's actually a really interesting story because Will Zell and the co-founder of this company were in a totally different kind of space. I mean, they were looking at how do we disrupt harvesting energy through latent signals on a cell phone, right? I mean, it was a completely different world so that you didn't have to charge your battery. So this is about wireless power originally before we ended up discovering, OK, somebody is really interesting, interested in industrial manufacturing to leverage wireless power so they didn't have to continuously change batteries or wire their monitoring when it comes to vibration analysis.

30:52And so that was the kind of that moment of shift in a typical startup where you have a big pivot. It's like, oh, wow, like this is interesting. And then it's just so hard right through, you know, the changes required even just politically to go into wireless power is a massive deal. So it's like, OK, the world isn't necessarily ready for that. It worked. It was very cool. And they were able to transfer wireless power in order to monitor assets in a manufacturing environment. But they became experts also in getting the most you can possibly get out of a battery in order to do that with with, you know, BLE or which is low energy Bluetooth.

31:28So it's really cool how they then pivoted again into, OK, the world's not ready for that. But we know we love this space. These are real hard problems that people are facing. Route based monitoring when you don't have to do a route, especially for critical assets, doesn't make sense anymore. Combining multiple modalities within a single sensor makes sense. doing it wirelessly makes sense and being able to do it at scale and be able to leverage a model that allows that sensor to exist for years at a time in field with the trusted battery life consistently operating effectively and getting you rich data, not just poor, but really rich data is something that really kind of brought everything forward into, all right, this is our home now.

32:10We know who we are and this is what we're going to go do. And we're going to keep stacking new modalities against this space until we solve optimal uptime. Well, I appreciate the backstory. It's been awesome getting to know you guys over the course of this conversation today. So with that, Dustin, Patrick, cheers. I just want to thank you both for taking the time to be on Manufacturing Happy Hour today. Yes, sir. We appreciate your time. Cheers, folks.

32:41Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. Again, if you want to connect with Patrick or Dustin, make sure to go to the show notes page at manufacturinghappyhour.com. Last thing I want to do is welcome Asset Watch to the Manufacturing Happy Hour family. We were just on tour with them for our All-American Manufacturing Summer podcast tour across the Northeast and the Midwest. Make sure to check them out at AssetWatch.com. Stay innovative. Stay thirsty. We'll catch you again here on Manufacturing Happy Hour next week. Cheers. Thanks for listening to Manufacturing Happy Hour, powered by the Industrial Network.