"That's fun about innovation, you don't know if it's going to work."
Within Techport's Fieldlab Smart Maintenance, several companies have been working together since 2018. Hans Staal of Facta was one of the first to do so: "We once started within the Fieldlab because we wanted to start a collaboration with companies you don't work with in normal business life. Actually, they are your competitors. This is because we think that without this collaboration we won't get everything out of it that is possible."
Hans Staal has now been working at Facta for 24 years. Facta is a specialist in the field of rotating equipment. They maintain, overhaul, improve and supply drives, pumps and generators, among other things. Hans is IT manager in the broadest sense of the word: "I work for all six branches throughout the Netherlands and am a kind of flying keeper in the field of IT and Smart Maintenance. A colleague of mine initially ended up at Techport to help set the whole thing up. Now I assist with analyses and we come up with ideas to get systems to come together and eventually make this into a workable product."
The Fieldlab Smart Maintenance Pilot Plant is owned by Facta and leased toTechport. Hans: "We once built the pilot installation to test and use different types of sensors in our own courses. For this we needed a test rig. Later Techport came along and they thought it would be a nice part of testing sensors on the one hand and, on the other hand, picking up a piece of training within Tata Steel Academy. From Facta we are involved in two use cases. In one use case we are mainly analyzing different data to see what we can do in combination. In the other use case we are assisting in the user-friendly creation of a dashboard but the bringing together and comparison of the data is still in its infancy."
Together with the Fieldlab partners, Hans wants to create the best possible and most reliable system to improve maintenance, one where you can respond to data immediately. Hans: "We want to move from putting out fires to early warning. Ultimately, there will still be a need for expertise from companies like Facta to interpret data. But it would help if companies no longer had to look at the bulk of data in detail. That there is a system that can do this for you and that the expert can focus on the reports given." Whether it will succeed Hans doesn't know: "That's the nice thing about innovation. You don't know if it will succeed. We get new insights all the time. For example, a new company has just joined Techport that is an expert in the field of sound. We also take the data that comes out of that and see how it relates to other measurements. This is how we keep getting one step further. And that makes me excited every time to be involved within Techport's Fieldlab."
Techport Knowledge Hour: Solutions in drive and pump technology
Want to know more about Facta and its role within the Fieldlab Smart Maintenance? Then sign up now for the Techport Knowledge Hour on Thursday, June 17, from 4:00 to 5:00 pm.