The Invisible Partner: Why Akalta and Avibana are the ideal ally for sensor manufacturers

By Jordi Torné, 2024-11-29

You manufacture the backbone of Industry 4.0. Your sensors are engineering marvels: precise, robust, and capable of capturing a machine's smallest whisper—be it a microscopic vibration, a subtle temperature change, or a pressure fluctuation. Your hardware is the key to the next industrial revolution: Predictive Maintenance (PdM).

However, the reality is that in today's market, selling a sensor is no longer enough.

Your customers—the plant managers, maintenance directors, and reliability engineers—are not buying a device. They are buying the promise of predictability. They want a complete solution that doesn't just capture data but tells them: "This machine will fail in 45 days, and here is the plan to fix it."

The gap between data capture (your expertise) and action delivery (the complete solution) is where many sensor manufacturers stop. Building the advanced, scalable, and user-friendly software required for PdM is a monumental task, often more complex and costly than developing the hardware itself.

This is where Akalta comes in. As experts in dynamic asset management and Industrial IoT, we offer Avibana, a ready-to-integrate Condition Monitoring (CM) platform that transforms your smart hardware into a complete PdM solution, delivering the value your customers truly demand.

The Sensor Manufacturer’s Challenge: The Software Mountain

You are a hardware expert, but Predictive Maintenance software presents unique hurdles that often divert attention and resources from your core business:

1. The Massive Development Investment

Creating a PdM platform isn't a one-time project. It requires a massive ongoing investment in:

• Scaling Data Management: You need to handle terabytes of high-frequency time-series data (like vibrations). Storing, processing, and accessing this data efficiently is an engineering challenge in itself.

• Advanced Analysis Algorithms: Your customers expect more than just a chart. They want vibration analysis (spectra, waveforms), automatic calculation of derived parameters (like crest factor or overall RMS), and sophisticated alarm engines. This requires expertise in industrial signal analysis, not just web development.

• Security and Scalability: The software must be robust, cyber-secure, and capable of growing from a single site to hundreds of installations across different regions, whether in the cloud or on the edge of the network.

2. Diversion from Core Business Focus

Every hour your R&D team spends building or maintaining a dashboard or an alarm engine is an hour they are not spending improving the precision, battery life, or ruggedness of your sensors. By trying to be a hardware company and a software company, you risk being mediocre at both.

3. The Lack of Interoperability

Your clients use various systems, including SAP, an outdated CMMS, or a SCADA system. A sensor is only useful if its data can flow seamlessly to where maintenance decisions are made. Building connectors and interfaces (APIs) to dozens of third-party systems is an endless chore.

Akalta and Avibana eliminate this burden, allowing you to focus on what you do best: manufacturing the world's best sensing hardware.

Avibana: The Brain that Speaks the Language of Maintenance

Avibana is Akalta's Condition Monitoring (CM) and Predictive Maintenance platform, specifically designed to be the ideal partner for your hardware. It is the pre-built software layer your customers need, transforming the raw data from your sensors into actionable intelligence.

Here is how Avibana solves the common weaknesses and challenges facing your customers:

1. Managing Sensor Data from Multiple Sources

The first and most fundamental problem for your customers is data sprawl. Real PdM doesn't rely on just one sensor; it needs to integrate data from other sensors, PLCs, or even manual readings.

• Integrated Multi-Sensor Support: Avibana is built to capture scalar measurements (temperature, pressure) and dynamic measurements (vibration) from your IoT-enabled sensors.

• Flexible Data Capture: The platform is agnostic to your sensor technology, provided it can transmit data (often via an IoT gateway). It also handles data from offline data readers, ensuring that customers with hard-to-reach assets can use the same centralized platform.

• Single Source of Truth: Avibana consolidates all this disparate data into a single environment, making it easy for your customer to get a complete view of their asset health without switching applications.

2. Advanced Analysis and Automatic Fault Detection

Vibration is the language of rotating machinery. If your sensors capture vibration, they need software that can interpret that language. Avibana does this for you:

• Industrial-Grade Vibration Tools: Avibana doesn't just plot the waveform; it provides essential vibration analysis tools for accurate diagnosis, including displaying spectra and waveforms.

• Automatic Derived Parameter Calculation: Customers don't have to perform complex math. Avibana automatically calculates and records essential parameters like crest factor (a key indicator of impact) and overall RMS (a measure of vibration severity). These values are what truly trigger maintenance decisions.

• Historical Analysis and Trending: The platform allows users to navigate through timelines to consult historical information of the measurements and the asset's condition, essential for seeing long-term deterioration trends.

3. From Raw Data to Profitable Action (Alarms)

The value of PdM is realized in the early warning. If the software can't translate the data into a clear notification on time, the sensor fails its purpose.

• Smart Alarm Definition: Avibana allows users to define alarms based on specific thresholds of the calculated parameters (e.g., if temperature exceeds C or if vibration RMS exceeds the "Warning" level).

• Actionable Notifications: Users receive immediate notifications when an alarm is triggered. Crucially, Avibana requires users to acknowledge the notification, ensuring the event has been identified and properly handled, thus closing the loop on the alert.

• Asset Lifecycle Management: The platform supports the capture of events related to the assets (reviews, failures, parts replacements). This not only helps plan inspections and maintenance but builds a complete and auditable service history.

4. A Powerful, Simple User Experience

For a PdM solution to succeed, it must be adopted by engineers and technicians. Avibana ensures this with a clean and intuitive user interface:

• Customizable Dashboards: Users can create their own workspaces to display exactly the graphs and information they need, maximizing utility for different roles within your client's organization.

• Clear Visualizations: The platform displays dynamic data like waveforms or spectra, while scalar data is shown in easy-to-read trend charts and gauge-like widgets with color-coded alarm states.

The Strategic Advantage of the Akalta-Avibana Partnership

By partnering with Akalta, you are not just acquiring software; you are acquiring a proven business platform that multiplies the value of your hardware:

Akalta becomes your outsourced PdM software department. We provide the technological backbone so you can focus on making your sensor smaller, more accurate, and with longer battery life.

Your customer no longer has to assemble a solution from disparate tools; you can offer a turnkey PdM package, with the assurance that the software brain (Avibana) is expertly managed, updated, and maintained.

This strategy ensures that when your customers think of Predictive Maintenance, they think not just of your sensor, but of the complete, high-value solution that only you, with the help of Avibana, can offer.

What technical or commercial details about the integration process are most important for your sensor manufacturer partners?