Monitoring machine conditions through oil on a continuous basis!

Mr. Kotaro Ogura, Assistant Manager
Sales Promotion Dept., Customer Support Div., LCS Operations Div.

"We’d like to operate our machines with lowest possible costs for longest possible time.” “We definitely want to avoid abrupt, unexpected downtime of machines.” These were common challenges and requests of many customers and initiated the development of “ConSite OIL.”

To use a machine with a lower cost for a longer time, the key is preventive maintenance. And, for an effective preventive maintenance, it is definitely required to know machine conditions. We at Hitachi Construction Machinery have offered “ConSite” to remotely keep watching machines. “ConSite OIL” is based on the same concept. We keep watching oil or “blood” of machines to grasp machine conditions on an ongoing basis to realize an effective preventive maintenance.

I think nobody gets expensive and time consuming health tests such as CT scan or MRI as the first step. It is normal for us to get periodical health checks or daily checks. “ConSite OIL (Sensor)” with oil monitoring sensors is like these periodical or daily checks for humans. Oil monitoring by “ConSite OIL” can be compared to keeping doing blood tests for humans. In addition, when any abnormality is detected by the oil sensors, more detailed oil analysis is conducted to know the exact condition of the oil as “ConSite OIL(Analysis).” That can be compared to a thorough blood test for humans. We can get much information from oil or “blood” of machines.

Oil analysis was established as a method to check oil condition sometime ago and has been generally implemented. However, it takes a lot of cost, time and energy to take oil samples, send them to an analysis company, check analysis results and do necessary countermeasures. Despite of all these efforts, the result is good only for the moment when the sample was taken. In addition, taking oil samples must be done in a careful way the same as taking blood samples.
However, monitoring by ConSite OIL(Sensor) is automatically implemented without much effort. Furthermore, oil condition is monitored on a continuous basis and oil sampling is necessary only when an abnormality is detected by ConSite OIL (Sensor).

When an abnormality is detected, the information is delivered to dealer mechanics and oil analysis by ConSite OIL(Analysis) is recommended. Mechanics are only required to follow the failure analysis procedures to get to the cause of the abnormality. Titles and contents of notification mails, formats of the process flow, the way of pasting links, etc. are made common to those of “ConSite” as far as possible.

If you want to quickly take counter-actions by knowing conditions of a machine and its oil on a ongoing basis, you must keep a mechanic beside the machine all the time, which is not realistic. With “ConSite OIL, ” that is done by the oil monitoring sensors. The continual oil monitoring sensors can detect abnormalities which cannot be found by periodic inspections as soon as they show any sign in the oil. Thus, the machine condition can be more accurately grasped than oil analyses implemented on intervals.

“ConSite OIL” has been recently released and I believe it will contribute to reducing operation costs of customers’ machines and has a good chance of further development of condition monitoring. We will continue to strive to develop further solutions by using oil data so that our customers can use our machine with a sense of security.