The Customer
The company manufactures a wide range of pumps for industrial and OEM users in industries that manufacture chemicals, lasers and semiconductors. Their pumps handle solvents, chemicals and water for specialty applications.
The Challenge
The company was routinely receiving urgent maintenance calls for pumps that had broken down. The cause was typically the motor overheating due to excessive amp draw, low voltage, low flow rate, or elevated system temperature. Failure to spot these issues sooner was causing users downtime and costly repairs. And the urgent maintenance calls were preventing the company from optimizing maintenance team schedules. Unfortunately, monitoring the pumps was very difficult for users due to inaccessible locations and lack of operator knowledge of problem indicators.
The company looked at a number of hardware and software systems that would transmit data from the panel meter to a remote location in real time. However, they wanted to reduce the complexity of integration as much as possible while maximizing their return on investment. Many of the options they looked at required installation by trained technicians and complex systems requiring specialized expertise and software knowledge.
The Solution
The company was already using several of Trumeter’s Advanced Panel Meters (APM) in pumps because of their at-a-glance display for motor status, their ease of configuration, and their reliability in the field. Trumeter’s launch of the APM Gateway and the Trumeter Cloud remote monitoring platform meant the company could use their existing APM components without significant redesign or hardware costs. Trumeter Cloud allowed the company to expand its feature set to include early alerts for problem conditions and lifetime equipment performance data.
The Outcome
The APM Gateway with Trumeter Cloud was an easy addition to the company’s product with major benefits:
- Users avoided costly downtime by receiving advance alerts when motors were starting to overheat.
- Users gained insight into long term data for their motors, being able to predict annual maintenance costs.
- The company added valuable features, increasing the marketability of their pumps.
