Monitoring Offerings for Industry 4.0

Ana­log Devices (ADI) announced the acqui­si­tion of Test Motors, a com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in pre­dic­tive main­te­nance of elec­tric motors and gen­er­a­tors.  Based in Barcelona, Spain, Test Motors offers prod­ucts and ser­vices that detect faults in elec­tric motors before they cause dam­age to pro­duc­tion cycles and advis­es on how and when to repair them. The acqui­si­tion expands ADI’s port­fo­lio of con­di­tion-based mon­i­tor­ing solu­tions capa­ble of iden­ti­fy­ing equip­ment faults before down­time and cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure occur.

This acqui­si­tion builds on Ana­log Devices’ 2018 addi­tion of Oto­Sense, a start­up that devel­oped “sens­ing inter­pre­ta­tion” soft­ware able to learn and rec­og­nize sounds or vibra­tion and iden­ti­fy poten­tial prob­lems in a fac­to­ry machine or a car’s engine before they become severe. OtoSense’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) plat­form is ded­i­cat­ed to sens­ing inter­pre­ta­tion and enabling the mon­i­tor­ing of any asset, wher­ev­er locat­ed. Ana­log Devices plans to com­bine soft­ware from Oto­Sense with Test Motors’ mon­i­tor­ing capa­bil­i­ties to cre­ate solu­tions that offer an advanced, wholis­tic snap­shot of machine health by cap­tur­ing a wider breadth of poten­tial faults.

“Machine main­te­nance relies heav­i­ly on expe­ri­enced tech­ni­cians and engi­neers able to detect and diag­nose issues that can lead to unplanned down­time,” said Kevin Car­lin, Vice Pres­i­dent Automa­tion and Ener­gy Group, Ana­log Devices. “There are not enough trained pro­fes­sion­als, how­ev­er, to keep up with the demand as the num­ber of machines to main­tain rapid­ly grows. ADI’s con­di­tion-based mon­i­tor­ing appli­ca­tions, dri­ven by the acqui­si­tions of Test Motors and Oto­Sense, will tack­le this expert resource chal­lenge by pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with a sys­tem able to per­form com­plete and ear­ly detec­tion of anom­alies to avoid unex­pect­ed and cost­ly machine downtime.”

The Test Motors team will join ADI’s Automa­tion and Ener­gy Group and oper­ate as a key tech­nol­o­gy group. Finan­cial terms of the acqui­si­tion were not disclosed.

“We are excit­ed to become part of Ana­log Devices and work with its team of indus­tri­al tech­nol­o­gy experts,” said Emili Valero, Test Motors’ for­mer CEO. “The com­bin­ing of our tech­nol­o­gy and exper­tise will enable us to devel­op the next gen­er­a­tion of con­di­tion-based mon­i­tor­ing solu­tions designed to great­ly extend man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment life for elec­tri­cal and non-elec­tri­cal rotat­ing machines and deliv­er sig­nif­i­cant cost sav­ings that ben­e­fit both busi­ness­es and consumers.”

ADI’s Condition-based Monitoring Solutions

Con­di­tion-based mon­i­tor­ing is not about any sin­gle tech­nol­o­gy but instead a sys­tem-lev­el solu­tion that requires a com­bi­na­tion of tech­nolo­gies and solu­tion con­sid­er­a­tions. Ana­log Devices’ tech­nol­o­gy port­fo­lio enables these solu­tions with break­throughs in MEMS (micro­electro­mechan­i­cal sys­tems) sen­sors, flex­i­ble sig­nal con­di­tion­ing and data con­ver­sion tech­nolo­gies, pro­cess­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions solu­tions with the pow­er port­fo­lio to deliv­er opti­mized wire­less and wired con­di­tion-based mon­i­tor­ing solu­tions.  Com­bin­ing these tech­nolo­gies into a deploy­able solu­tion requires domain exper­tise in the form of asset and appli­ca­tion insights, mechan­i­cal design and attach­ment con­sid­er­a­tions, and the abil­i­ty to con­vert the infor­ma­tion into diag­nos­tic algorithms.