"We're very happy working with Milacron," he said. "There's great chemistry between the teams. We work well together."
Cramer said the M-Powered predictive maintenance functions are on new Milacron machines, and they can be outfitted on existing machines, too. Machine data gets transported through a secure portal to the cloud, then the data gets analyzed. The results can be sent to the customer or the Milacron service team, or both.
Currently the ei3 predictive maintenance system is working with Milacron hydraulic pumps, heater bands and extruder screws, Cramer said. The system uses sensors on pumps to measure vibration, but for heater bands and screws, it continually analyzes past data to predict the future and potential problems, using proprietary algorithms.
Cramer explained how it works: "With the fleet of machines that we've been monitoring over the years, we track what has been monitored from the machines.
"We also track certain events, such as heater band replacements, hydraulic pump failures and extruder screws. And when we see those events, we study the data that we've monitored leading up to the events. And we've been able to isolate certain signatures," Cramer added.
The result is a predictive model that is constantly measured against new machine data, Cramer said.
