Plastic granulate

At WAGO, the plastic granulate reaches the injection moulding machine through a pipe system driven by vacuum pumps that create negative pressure. Much like a pneumatic tube system, they deliver the different granulates to wherever they are needed. The air flow carries dust with it, so filters in the exhaust pipes protect the pumps. If a filter becomes too full, conveying capacity drops, and in the worst case two granulates mix in the pipe.

The filter needs cleaning before conveying capacity falls below an acceptable level, not according to a fixed schedule. WAGO used to clean the filters of its material distribution system at fixed intervals, often unnecessarily, and had to shut the system down to do so. Today, sensors measure the pressure upstream and downstream of the filter. From the contamination forecast, the system automatically creates a maintenance order in the SAP system.

Clean filters save energy because the vacuum pumps then need less power. Since introducing predictive maintenance, WAGO cleans the filters of its material conveying system earlier when contamination is heavier. According to WAGO, the savings cannot be quantified across the board because they depend on many factors. As the pumps often run at several kilowatts, however, the effect is certainly significant.

Early signs of faults are anomalies in the sensor data, which machine learning models detect before major failures occur. WAGO replaced Excel lists with such models, which independently identify patterns in current and historical data. A dashboard flags detected anomalies and allows users to run their own analyses with live and historical data over any period. As a result, the time spent on troubleshooting fell by more than fifty per cent.