FAQ
- What is “Asset Management?”
- What is “Trend Monitoring?”
- What is a Control Chart? Where can I find more information about monitoring?
- What is the ICEMS™ technology?
- What is the iTrend® software?
- Is iTrend® a data-driven monitoring tool?
- How does iTrend® analyzes the state of an asset?
- What does an iTrend control chart look like?
- Is iTrend® only suited for monitoring aircraft and engine related assets?
- How do I enter asset data into iTrend®?
- Is iTrend® compatible with the Machinery Information Management Open System Alliance (MIMOSA) standard?
- What is iTrend's user interface?
- What is an iTrend® report?
- What is an iTrend® alert? How many severity levels are there?
- How does iTrend® reduce false alarms?
- How can I use iTrend® to monitoring my assets?
- Which computing platforms is iTrend® compatible with?
- How can iTrend® reduce my maintenance costs?
- What assets has iTrend® been monitoring?
- How do I buy iTrend®?
What is "Asset Management?"
Asset Monitoring is the process of observing the current and/or future states of an asset and providing recommendations for maintenance actions or operational decisions. It is an enabling piece of a commonly known Asset Optimization. Typically, an asset is a physical system, a machine, or a piece of equipment. For example, an aircraft engine is an asset, and its operational temperature is an indication of the engine’s state. A problem could occur in the engine such that the engine temperature could increase, suddenly or gradually, to an undesirable level. By observing this anomalous temperature “trend,” identifying a probable cause, and reporting this abnormal state (or condition) to maintenance staff, the underlying problem can be corrected before the problem deteriorates.
What is "Trend Monitoring?"
Trend Monitoring is a specialized subclass of asset monitoring approach that emphasizes effective “visualization” of a problem throughout its deterioration process. Many different techniques of visualization have been used in trend monitoring. One of the most effective technique is the control charting method.
What is a Control Chart? Where can I find more information about "Trend Monitoring?"
Control chart is a statistical control tool consisting of at least four components: data points, an upper control limit (UCL), a lower control limit (LCL), and a trend line, as shown below.
You can find a general overview of health monitoring and control charting method in Chapter 8, Engine Monitoring and Health Management, Aircraft Engine Controls: Design, System Analysis, and Health Monitoring, by Link C. Jaw with Jack D. Mattingly.
What is the ICEMS™ Technology?
Intelligent Condition-based Equipment Management Software (ICEMS) is a condition-based maintenance (CBM) technology prototyping platform, which was originally developed by Scientific Monitoring Inc. under a United States Air Force (USAF) research grant. ICEMS platform consists of six major functions: data analysis, state detection, health assessment, prognostics, life extension, and maintenance recommendation. ICEMS is the technology foundation of SMI’s iTrend® remote monitoring software.
What is the iTrend® software?
iTrend® is SMI’s Asset Monitoring software. It is a web-based, remote monitoring software. It uses the trend monitoring approach to detecting anomalies, isolating faults, predicting limit exceedances, and reporting potential problems and recommended actions to maintenance and operational personnel. iTrend® consists of different analytical modules to meet different monitoring needs. One of the iTrend® analytical modules incorporates Six-Sigma techniques to sift out true fault information from background noises.
Is iTrend® a data-driven monitoring tool?
iTrend® is not just a data-driven tool, but also a physics-based tool. iTrend® incorporates SMI’s patented hybrid modeling technology that embeds physics-based models in data-driven, statistical approximations. The diagram below shows this hybrid modeling concept.
How does iTrend® analyze the state of an asset?
iTrend® analyzes the current and future states of an asset based on successive aggregation of information from lower levels to higher levels. Typically, the current state of an asset is observed by one or more sensor measurements, and these measurements are made periodically during the operation of the asset. For example, a temperature sensor may be used to measure the inlet or exit temperature of a fluid in an asset. On the other hand, future state is estimated based on the current state, past trends, and anticipated future usage of the asset.
What does an iTrend control chart look like?
An iTrend® control chart can have fixed or varying control limits as shown below.
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Is iTrend® only suited for monitoring aircraft and engine related assets?
iTrend® is not just for airplanes and engines, but for all types of industrial assets. The Release 2 of iTrend® has been re-architected as a generic monitoring software for all equipment in all industries.
How do I use iTrend® to monitor my assets?
iTrend® 2.0 and above has powerful System Configuration features that can allow a user to configure his or her own asset types, names, identification numbers, measurements, and even calculations or equations. The user can also set alarm triggers, alarm levels, and alarm management options.
How do I enter asset data into iTrend®?
iTrend® supports data-import through file streams. The supported, standard file formats are Comma Separated Value (CSV) and Extended Markup Language (XML). Other proprietary formats are also supported based on customer requests. Typically, a customer or end user packs asset data records into a data file in either CSV or XML format and then applies iTrend® data-import utility to process the asset data into iTrend® native database.
Is iTrend® compatible with the Machinery Information Management Open System Alliance (MIMOSA) standard?
Yes. iTrend® data structure is compatible with the MIMOSA standard. From the beginning of the development of iTrend® in 2001, it has used MIMOSA’s CRIS reference model as the data model.
What is iTrend's user interface?
iTrend® uses a browser-based graphical user interface (GUI) with intuitive navigation procedures to request inputs, presents results, and visualize relationships in the data. The iTrend® application is a Java-enabled J2EE server that runs in a Tomcat Application Server environment. The end user simply runs his or her preferred Web Browser client (such as the Internet Explorer or the Firefox) and connects to the iTrend® server to create an instance using the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
What is an iTrend® report?
An iTrend® report is a useful way to present your data in a logical, tabular format, allowing you to view summarized statistics and health status of a specific asset of the entire fleet. iTrend® reports fall into two categories: standard report and customized report. iTrend® can also export the data or results of interest to an external report engine or application.
What is an iTrend® alert? How many severity levels are there?
An iTrend® alert is generated when a data anomaly or suspected fault/problem is identified. iTrend® alerts fall into four levels L1 to L4 with increasing severity or importance.
How does iTrend® reduce false alarms?
iTrend® employs patented data-driven and physics-based models as well as decision support algorithms to reduce false alarms. An example of iTrend’s ability to reduce false alarms are shown below.
Example: iTrend® smoothes data to reveal trends
How can I use iTrend® to monitoring my assets?
SMI offers two types of solutions that use iTrend® as the monitoring “engine:” SMI-hosted solution and customer-hosted solution.
The SMI-hosted solution relieves you of the burden of managing your data, software, and alerts, and empower you to do what you do best in your business. You send the data to SMI, and we manage them for you, together with our asset monitoring service.
The customer-hosted solution supports two different approaches:
- to embed the iTrend® software inside a customer’s application, i.e., the “iTrend® inside” approach as shown on the upper-right-hand drawing of the diagram on the Solutions page;
- to provide a “turn-key” solution with pre-installed iTrend® software on a server hardware as shown on the upper-right-hand drawing of the diagram on the Solutions page. This stand-alone iTrend® Appliance is designed to be installed on the customer’s Local Area Network (LAN). This type of solution is best for a customer who requires absolute privacy of data and has its own local IT staff to support the infrastructural needs of the system.
Which computing platforms is iTrend® compatible with?
Because iTrend® is a Java/web-based application, it can be installed on any platform that is capable of supporting J2EE, Tomcat Application Server and Apache Web Server.
How can iTrend® reduce my maintenance costs?
iTrend® helps you uncover the problems in early stages when fixing them can be planned ahead and done less expensively. Furthermore, by reducing the number of false alarms, iTrend® helps you reduce unnecessary maintenance activity and to improve operational efficiency.
What assets has iTrend® been monitoring?
iTrend® has been monitoring various types of airplane assets like engine, environmental control system (ECS), landing gear, fluid consumption, oxygen level, etc.; it has also been monitoring various types of assets on marine vessels and ground vehicles.
How can I buy iTrend®?
You can buy SMI’s iTrend®-enabled monitoring service or license the software and appliance. Please contact our
Sales
staff to map out the best course to meet your needs.