CHETO invests on advanced monitoring and predictive maintenance with support from INEGI

Advanced monitoring and preventive maintenance technologies are two of the pillars of Industry 4.0, with enormous benefits for both production systems and business models. More efficient processes, minimization of down-time, and access to diverse information to support decision making are some of the many advantages.

Aware of this reality and its importance for competitiveness, CHETO, a manufacturer of deep-drilling, drilling, milling, threading and boring machines, challenged INEGI to support the integration of a central computer platform and a sensor module to be applied in their products.

As Luís Moreira, responsible for the project at INEGI, explains, "the objective is to develop skills and solutions to enable CHETO products - whether new or in catalog - with technologies that allow obtaining, working and communicating information relevant to the health of the machine, without affect its normal functioning".

Based on the integration of a sensor and local processing module, and an IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) platform to manage the equipment connected to it, CHETO has the support of the Institute to create a new monitoring solution to be integrated in the products, but also of a new service. Verification of system data history, automatic fault alerts and predictive analysis of their equipment are some of the features that customers can acquire, in the Software-as-a-Service logic, to make better decisions in terms of maintenance planning.

The project starts with the mapping of the main malfunctions and failures of CHETO systems, a task in hands of INEGI's team. The Institute's team will also support the development of a sensor module to capture phenomena that cause damage and the need for maintenance, in the areas of vibration and noise, relative linear and/or angular motion, temperature and thermal signature, forces and pressures.

This support also extends to the study and selection of edge computing systems to analyze information from sensors and the IIoT platform and how to implement predictive maintenance features. Finally, it will also support the construction of the pilot system.

The CHETO_IIoT project is co-financed by the ERDF through the NORTE Regional Operational Program 2020, and by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund.