Executives from John Crane weigh in on what will affect the pumps industry this year.
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How have advancements in IIoT affected your business? How do you predict they will continue to do so?
Mike Wilder, Marketing Manager, Digital Solutions: We are at the early stages of an exciting time in this industry. Technology advancements are driving the development of the industrial internet of things (IIoT) while simultaneously bringing down the costs of these solutions. This convergence allows us to digitize and contextualize industrial asset performance across a broad range of assets.
The vast amounts of data coming from these digitization and data management advances are emphasizing the importance of our domain expertise. The effective use of IIoT and "big data" today depends on balancing high technology solutions with high touch services and expertise. We see this combination as the cornerstone to building reliability and asset management services for our customers. The solutions we are building and deploying today are the foundations for accelerated deep learning of rotating equipment and associated systems, providing us with more timely equipment performance insights, failure diagnostics, root cause analysis and end-of-life predictions. The ability to monitor and detect variances and predict failure at an early stage can result in substantial lifecycle cost savings to our customers.
As technologies mature and move closer to the edge (enabling on-site analysis for even the most remote assets) or to the cloud (enabling real-time analysis of numerous assets, across a large geography), and as end-user adoption rates for IIoT-based monitoring technologies increase, we will need to apply our expertise to offer more customized solutions tailored to maximize the ROI for each customer. The full range from prescriptive to predictive to preventative analytics services will be expected, shifting the insight paradigm from “When will it fail?” to “What should I do today to extend the life of my assets?”
What are you most optimistic about in 2019?
Patrick Thompson, Executive Vice President, Strategic Marketing and New Business Development: The fundamentals of our markets are as healthy as they have been for some time; the need for clean, reliable energy to support the growing world population continues to climb inexorably. The demand for goods of all types to support a rise in the standard of living in emerging markets is fueling the growth in refining and manufacturing in China, India, the Middle East and beyond. Furthermore, this growth is also taking place against a backdrop of sustainability and control of emissions as countries and corporations set targets for a reduction in our impact on the environment. However, other plants across the world are facing aging infrastructure and need to improve efficiency while controlling costs.
We will not achieve solutions for these challenges without a focus on innovation and attracting a new generation of dynamic and enthusiastic engineers and technicians into our industry. I am most optimistic about the insights, new ideas and energy this new generation can bring to our industries.
What else should the end users who read Pumps & Systems know about the year ahead?
Jeroen Huizinga, Global Product Manager—Filtration: As oil and gas companies make key strategic investment decisions on mission-critical equipment, it is of paramount importance that next generation, advanced filtration equipment and solutions are considered. Contamination in process fluid, lubrication and hydraulic fluids can cause unplanned maintenance on valves, bearings and seals, and this downtime is becoming more expensive for end user operators. As environmental regulation and end user reliability requirements increase, we expect companies to adopt new filtration and separation technologies to capture contaminants that may otherwise bypass traditional filtration solutions such as strainers and standard cartridge style filters.