In Roman times, humans were the messengers. Runners traveled sometimes for a week or more to bring home news of the battle. During this interval the situation on the front could change dramatically, rendering accurate decision-making almost impossible.
Romans didn’t have smart devices and remote monitoring. But thankfully, you do.
Why aren’t you using this to your advantage for remote compressor locations?
Maybe you’re fine with your people driving miles/kilometers and hours and hours checking compressors and facilities that are working fine—and only finding the problem sites after they’ve been down, undetected, for hours.
Compressor monitoring can be done stand-alone or as a plug-in for our comprehensive Zedi Access database and analytics.
At the most basic level you can just track whether the compressor is running or not. This alone will reduce wasted site trips. You can tell Zedi Access to send an alarm when it detects an “off” situation.
Prioritize your field peoples’ daily route so that they go to “off” sites first. They may not know what’s wrong, so they might not arrive properly equipped, but it’s a start.
The next level is to add sensors to detect the presence of supply gas, gas line pressures, run time and other basic components. This tells you one reason that might have contributed to a stoppage.
That only lets you know when you already have a problem. That’s nice, but the next level is even better.
What if you could often predict trouble before it starts?
With the third level we monitor everything to do with the compressor: all the previous information plus aggregated compressor hours, oil pressure, motor temperature, RPM and more. As temperature rises more than is expected due to a problem or the oil pressure drops or RPM slow down without explanation, it can tell you it’s time for service before a breakdown.
Think of it this way: the basic level does tell you when the system stops, so you can send people out from nearby or from the field office, but your compressor is still going to be down for some time while they travel—all the time you’re losing production.
With full monitoring you can see the clouds gathering and send people out with the right tools and parts so they can stop the compressor just long enough for repairs—or replacement if that’s what’s indicated.
It can get even better—including this in your Zedi SCADA system gives you the option of a remote shutdown when you detect a leak or some other emergency.
Whatever level you choose, it’s all about efficiency on every level: less time wasted behind windshields visiting untroubled sites; quicker diagnosis of problems to reduce lost production; greater safety because of reduced road time; and minimized maintenance costs because you treat problems while they’re small and easily fixed.
The Romans, being the expert engineers that they were—building roads, aqueducts, coliseums— would’ve jumped at the chance to replace runners with all this instant data fed through easily read formats like Zedi Access and Zedi Go (for mobile devices).
Be like the Romans and let’s make Rome great again!
