AW Feature-July-August 2022

By Ganesh Govindarajan

There are significant economic and environmental imperatives to keep an enterprise’s assets and facilities operation worthy. Drones possess unmatched abilities to perch-and-stare, capture video, and undertake laser scanning. These capabilities impart drones the qualities that make them the instruments of choice for many, if not all, routine and hazardous operations required to be undertaken during inspection, maintenance and the tracking of performance of an enterprise’s assets and facilities.

TECHNOLOGY EVOLUTION

Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), as they are variously known, were first used for commercial applications in the 1980s in Japan for spraying crop pesticides. The technology used on drones then was primitive.

However, since then, advancements in drone technologies and supportive regulations, together with increased investments, have accelerated the development of infinitely more capable drones. The increase in drone capabilities has led to newer applications and business operating models in agriculture, infrastructure, security, delivery, transportation, entertainment, etc. The estimates published by Berkshire Hathaway in the Business Wire magazine predict the size of the global drone market to reach US$ 41.3 Billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 9.4%.

Asset performance management software has also evolved rapidly to enable enterprises to ‘track’ their assets and maximize their returns on them. Firms can now track their assets by monitoring their condition, receiving alerts for predictive maintenance, and receiving advance failure warnings through embedded AI/ML. Asset performance management software enables the life cycle extension of the firm’s assets.

“Efficient Asset Performance Management (APM) is increasingly viewed as a competitive differentiator. Earlier, the evolution of APM systems was incremental. The introduction of IoT, AI, ML, and drones has revolutionized APM.”

The new technologies and the more powerful asset performance management software enable the efficient exchange of information between sensors, cameras, drones, and personnel. The enhanced communication between the various components increases the efficiency of asset performance management, enabling organizations to detect asset degradation and failures ahead of time and thus take actions to prevent them from occurring.

The lightweight material of the drones is advantageous for ease of control and high-altitude flights. The drone’s control system (the ‘brain’) interfaces with sensors, navigation equipment, cameras, and the GPS.

You may also tether drones. Tethered drones prevent the possibility of signal jamming and enable longer flight times since it is powered through the tether rather than through an onboard battery.
AI and ML technologies enable APM systems to process data collected via sensors and the images/videos collected via cameras to extract actionable information. The APM system presents the processed data in a form that enables managers to make critical decisions based on the condition of the assets in real time and optimize their maintenance, thus enhancing their reliability, availability and performance.

APPLICATIONS

Asset inspection with automated drones is performed extensively in asset performance management (APM). Drones can easily reach difficult-to-access locations, enabling personnel to undertake inspections remotely, quickly, and safely.
Suppose the drone identifies any maintenance or
repair issue after the inspection. In that case, the maintenance/repair personnel can reach the location armed with all the necessary tools, having already performed the fault diagnosis. The flexibility and ease of operations that drones provide increasingly make them an integral part of asset performance management.With the increased attention on climate change, renewable energy sources such as solar farms see exponential growth globally. Solar farms are large and usually located in remote, rural areas. Using traditional methods of inspection for solar farms is inefficient.

“Drones can quickly cover large areas of the solar farms to detect debris on the panels that reduce their efficiency. In addition, they can beam visual images for defect identification. Drones can also beam thermal images for the detection of faulty, overheating panels.”

Drones are extremely handy for inspecting large real estate such as tall buildings, bridges, power lines, etc. Defects in such structures can have catastrophic consequences and necessitate regular inspection for early warning of possible defects.

Traditional inspection methods would require temporary shutting down of the installation. The inspection would also require ladders, ropes, scaffolding, or other specialized and expensive machinery.

Drones, however, can easily be deployed for the visual inspection of the difficult-to-access portions of these structures. Maintenance personnel can remain on the ground, the structure can remain operational, and they can obtain all the data required for making a maintenance/repair decision safely and quickly. Also, uninterrupted operations aid continued production and increased revenue.
Manufacturing setups such as cement factories and chemical plants have tall chimneys, power generating plants, long conveyor belts/pipelines, and running machinery that makes inspection and maintenance a hazardous task. Drones make the inspection of these structures/installations efficient, and together with asset performance management software, provide maintenance personnel with the information to decide on the maintenance/repair action.

From oil platforms and power stations to large buildings, smart drones can be seamlessly integrated into asset performance management, ushering in a whole new level of efficiency and safety to managing large installations.

With drones, businesses can eliminate concerns related to time, expense, and safety of manual inspections. Drones enable accurate, real-time inspection of data, cost-saving, and maximization of equipment availability, thus creating a paradigm shift from passive to proactive management of assets. Most importantly, through integration with asset performance management software, drones will provide businesses with insights for informed, strategic decision-making for asset performance management and enable them to raise their return on their assets.

(The writer is Associate Vice President – Solution Advisory, Digital Enterprise Platform, Ramco Systems)