Condition Monitoring in Industry 4.0-Design Challenges and Possibilities: A Case Study

Abstract

The application of IoT in manufacturing industry is believed to transform the traditional concept of factories into fully integrated manufacturing systems that are capable of meeting different requirements/demands originating within the factory, in supply chain and in user communities in a real time manner. One key area that is likely to benefit at an early stage development of the Industrial IoT is the condition monitoring of the production machinery. However, there are several challenges in realizing effective IoT enabled condition monitoring solutions with currently available enabling technologies. In this paper, we analyze the design challenges associated with realizing IoT enabled industrial condition monitoring with particular focus on enabling end-devices in managing large amount of acquired data. With the help of a vibration based condition monitoring case study the challenges are analyzed in a quantitative manner and possible alternatives are explored. The results suggest that for the efficient and long term condition monitoring in the smart industry of the future, improvements in the enabling technologies are required to design optimized end-devices.