image: Tecnalia, the technological research and development centre, has received the highest award in the field of European innovation for its development of a failure prediction system for Industry 4.0 patented by NEM Solutions. The European Innovation Award was jointly granted to TECNALIA and NEM Solutions by EARTO, the highest European association in the field of innovation, for the 'Impact Delivered' category which rewards the best technology transfer practice. view more
Credit: Tecnalia
Failure prediction in Industry 4.0 may be conducted thanks to the application of Big Data which facilitates efficient management and smart analysis of large data volumes in industry to maximise productivity and competitiveness on a global scale. Thus this technology called AURA helps forecasting expected behaviour and identifying future failures in key corporate assets such as wind turbines or railway subsystems.
This technology, industrialised and patented by NEM Solutions with TECNALIA cooperation during the research and development phase, is currently being applied worldwide in the wind power and railway sectors.
At the award ceremony Alberto Diez Oliván, TECNALIA researcher, expressed "we are proud to see this technology where TECNALIA has collaborated from the start, offering great results to companies in the Railway and Wind Power Sectors, through NEM Solutions products and services".
On the other hand, Alberto Conde Mellado, founder and CEO of NEM Solutions, stressed "TECNALIA has been, and we hope it will continue to be, a strategic partner for us. Ten years ago, DATA was not BIG, and we launched a joint research project to turn an idea into a sustainable and scalable business line. Ten years later we are still gaining clients every month and we are recognised on the market".
Application on the market
AURA is currently implemented in the wind power and railway sectors, and has conducted over 80 million hours of operation in over 63,000 assets connected worldwide. For example, 18,000 train wheels are supervised daily in the 5 continents.
In the wind power sector, it enables companies to plan predictive maintenance strategies while reducing operation and maintenance costs associated with unplanned downtime and increasing energy generation and wind turbine life cycle. With thousands of wind turbines supervised by AURA there are many success stories where failure is detected with up to over one year in advance. The record of success stories in this sector confirms savings amounting to hundreds of thousands of Euro thanks to the identification of a single catastrophic failure at the right time. When this is multiplied by all assets monitored, the result will be millions in savings.
In the railway sector, this system improves passenger safety and security, guaranteeing greater punctuality in train services. Benefits go from the control of possible train wheel defects, to enhanced comfort as future failures in air conditioning equipment are detected. NEM Solutions clients have confirmed improvements of up to 35% in their budgets thanks to this technology and to NEM Solutions auxiliary services, increasing the useful life of assets by up to 30%.
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