Comprehensive Condition Monitoring in Raw Material Plants

Customer Success Story

When Finnsementti, a Finnish cement manufacturer, was looking for a condition monitoring solution, they decided to go with Schaeffler OPTIME. With this wireless condition monitoring system, the cement manufacturer can monitor almost all rotating machines in the plant automatically, quickly, precisely, and continuously. Unplanned downtimes are thus reduced to a minimum by OPTIME. Did you know? OPTIME was awarded the Innovation Award 2020 and the Red Dot Award 2021.

OPTIME has reasonable price and easy installationn that enable scaling up the monitoring to a large number of machines in a cement mill. Schaeffler has a broad knowhow of Condition Monitoring and specifically of the machine motion. We appreciate that very much.
Tommy Ranta
Production Director, Finnsementti Oy
With OPTIME our maintenance staff has the transparency over the condition of most of our machines without the need to watch them closely all the time.

Toni Virtanen
Cement Production Manager, Finnsementti Oy

Benefit
Challenge
Solution & What's Special
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Benefit

Easy and rapid installation of OPTIME components.
Easy data-reading, no expert knowledge required.
Greater security for employees, as access to hard-to-reach machinery is no longer required with the digital service.
Cost-effective solution for comprehensive and wireless monitoring of units.
Permits long-term planning of maintenance measures, personnel requirements, and replacement part procurement.
Unplanned downtime is no longer an issue for monitored machines.

Schaeffler OPTIME is fitted.
The Schaeffler app is installed.
Employees check the data.

Challenge

Finnsementti has been producing cement, concrete, lime, and other raw materials at its plants in Parainen and Lappeenranta for over a hundred years.

The Finnish cement manufacturer‘s main concern is plant downtime. Around 90 machine failures occur on average every year, the majority of which are caused by auxiliary units. In such cases, production is suspended completely for approximately 1 to 2 hours.

The most critical units are motors, gearboxes, pumps, and fans. Finnsementti is also looking for a solution that will provide greater security for personnel. As auxiliary units are generally difficult to access, accidents are inevitable. Finnsementti has not installed condition monitoring solutions previously for the purpose of monitoring auxiliary units, as these were too expensive and, for the most part, did not work wirelessly. For this reason, Finnsementti decided to seek assistance from Schaeffler.

The Condition-Monitoring Solution - Schaeffler OPTIME

Image of the OPTIME Condition Monitoring solution for wireless vibration monitoring, with the Red Dot Award seal

Schaeffler experts recommended a comprehensive condition monitoring solution in the form of Schaeffer OPTIME.

The Schaeffler OPTIME solution comprises wireless sensors, a gateway, and digital service. The sensors are responsible for monitoring machines and devices. The gateway receives the data from the sensors and transfers these to the Schaeffler Cloud. The data are analyzed using the digital service and an error diagnosis is created on the basis of algorithms. The customer receives clear statements about the condition of their machines via a mobile app.

The installation work, which involved fitting around 150 sensors to motors, fan pumps, and gearboxes, as well as mounting the gateway, was completed in just a few hours. The mobile app allowed hundreds of machines to be monitored directly.

What’s special

Finnsementti was one of the first customers to use the Schaeffler solution, which can be applied across market sectors. OPTIME has been available on the European market since July 1, 2020. Other regions will follow soon.