Electrical Rotating

Machine Asset
Performance
Management
Overview
GE Power

gepower.com
Electrical Rotating Machine APM is the name II. Market
of a new technology being developed in GE ERMs and VFDs are ubiquitously used across all industries. Per
Power. The target of the development was IHS [1], every year, roughly 41 million low-voltage (LV) and 60,000
medium-voltage (MV) motors are manufactured. Each year, more and
to come up with a disruptive solution for more rotating machines are being applied with Variable Frequency
monitoring motor and generator health to Drive (VFD) technology due to the efficiency savings vs. direct speed
technologies, which means that most of those motors will be
detect impending failures with two main accompanied by VFD or some other form of power electronics, like
performance characteristics in mind; having Automatic Voltage Regulators or Exciters.
a cost position low enough that would allow A. Steel
fleet-wide deployment, even covering low- Steel is used in almost every aspect of day-to-day life – from cars to
construction, from cargo ships to surgical scalpels. This ubiquity has
voltage motors, and being deployable in not stopped it from suffering from the worst downturn in 50 years,
brownfield applications. The overall intent is driven by unbalanced supply and demand. Last year, China—the
to create new service models with a digital world’s largest producer and consumer of steel—announced over half
a million redundancies as part of a program to manage overcapacity
component. The solution has been launched to within the steelmaking industry.
date in O&G, Metals, Paper and Marine. A steel processing plant presents a challenging environment for
any equipment, and breakdowns and operational disruptions are a
I. Introduction common occurrence. Avoiding unplanned downtime is a critical driver
of productivity, customer experience and profitability, but maintaining
Electrical Rotating Machines (ERMs) is the catch-all name for equipment to ensure peak performance drives costs upwards. As
millions of motors and generators that work to power our world. important as avoiding unplanned downtime is maintaining production
Whether a steel mill, a cargo ship, an LNG plant, or a production quality and controlling energy consumption.
site manufacturing any one of a million different products; rotating
machines are at the heart of our industrial ecosystem. The steel companies that will thrive in an ever more-competitive
environment will be those that manage to address those challenges
When ERMs fail, the consequences are significant; ranging from and continue to improve their profitability even during the challenging
operational outages to significant power system disruptions downturn of the market.
including blackouts. For example, a mid-size LNG facility could suffer
costs of $4M/day through unplanned downtime. On a global scale, 1. Digital solutions for one of the world’s original inventions
unplanned shutdowns in the process industry cost 5% of total annual The production of steel requires significant numbers of rotating
production—that’s as much as $30 billion a year. machines – a single processing line can have hundreds of motors
Traditionally, failures in rotating machines were detected using running conveyor belts and driving rolling mills, all of which have
vibration sensors. However, vibration sensors can only detect an impact on product quality, productivity and ultimately profits.
mechanical failure, and not common electrical failure issues such as Therefore, ensuring they stay online and working optimally is crucial.
insulation degradation in high and medium-voltage motors, ground Every single step in a production process can generate powerful data,
faults or broken rotor bars. Furthermore, vibration sensors are and that is no different for the rotating machines deployed in a steel
relatively fragile and liable to fail themselves. The cost of hundreds mill. If you want to understand intimately how the process is behaving,
or perhaps thousands of vibration sensors make their universal there is nowhere better to look at than the information provided by
deployment in large-scale processes uneconomic. This has led to the heart and muscles of the process – the motors and the drives.
monitoring being limited to critical machines.
2. Solving the billion dollar problems1
The sharp decline in the cost of big data analytics and cloud solutions
A single hot strip mill can lose up to $30 million in annual revenue
like GE’s Predix Platform, along with new sensing techniques, have
to unplanned downtime. With the hot strip mill being only one part
enabled a completely different way of monitoring the status of
of finished steel processing, this equates to billions of dollars of
rotating machines.
revenue lost across the industry. To avoid this loss, motors need to
Over the past year, several GE business units have been working be monitored to ensure that failures are caught in advance and parts
to bring together different existing technologies within GE, such as replaced before an operational disruption occurs.
Electrical Signature Analysis (ESA) from GE’s Global Research Centre
Maintenance costs are a very large expenditure item for process plants,
(GRC), the Industrial Internet Control System (IICS) portfolio, including
potentially higher in value than unplanned maintenance. Reduction of
the FieldAgent, from its Automation & Controls business, and GE’s
maintenance costs by leveraging better asset and process information,
Predix platform and APM product from GE Digital to form a cost
and providing prescriptive analytics vs. prognostics (see Section 11)
effective, holistic rotating machine monitoring solution. Combining
will provide operators with the right information at the right time and
these technologies with GE Power Conversion’s intimate knowledge
recommendations on what actions to take. Once operators have gained
of the industries it serves and ERMs and Variable Frequency Drives
confidence in the intelligence provided by these types of systems,
(VFDs) technologies, a new and disruptive solution for monitoring
substantial reductions in maintenance costs can be achieved by
ERMs that does not require vibration sensors has been created.
avoidance of unnecessary maintenance actions.

1
All financial figures in this section were derived from continued customer interviews and discovery sessions.

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B. Paper enough historical data, there is no need to have deep expertise on the
asset to be able to create good analytics. However, they suffer several
Paper is another industry that has motors at the core of its process. limitations, for example:
A paper mill will typically produce between 2,000 to 3,000 tons of 1. The assets need to be instrumented and enough historical data
paper per day using about 60 million gallons of water. Typically, they available to train the algorithms. Without this history deployment
have no finished product storage, and manufacture to order, so any is delayed and if additional instrumentation is required capex is
loss of production due to unplanned downtime translates directly to increased considerably.
lost profit.
2. B
 ecause of the large amount of data to be transmitted, the failure
One paper plant may have up to 4,000 motors. Most of them will be modes must be such as to be detectable with measurements that
driven by variable frequency drives (VFDs). Operators typically deploy are not more frequent than 10 Hz, otherwise the data cannot be
every type of VFDs, from common bus PWM drives to standalone to transmitted effectively via the internet because of both volume of
LCI, and nearly every combination of DOL and protection schemes. A data and speed of response of communications because of practical
typical paper mill manufacturer will spend around $65 million/year on data transfer rate limitations.
motors (both new & repair).
Certain failure modes can only be identified using high frequency
The energy consumed in a paper mill, a large percentage of which is sampling techniques due to fundamental Nyquist rate limitations, many
consumed in electric motors, places paper amongst the top five most of these failure modes require sampling at frequencies greater than
energy intensive industries [2]. 10 Hz. As such because continuous data streams at these frequencies
In a typical paper mill, the total process downtime due to motor faults cannot be transmitted to the cloud, edge analytics are employed. Edge
is between $16 million and $35 million/year in lost production time, analytics places first level analysis of data in a device attached to the
not including repairs, time and material, etc., as the loss is quantified equipment being monitored, and this reduces frequency and volume of
before the repair is done to categorize it. For the typical paper mill the data that needs to be transmitted to the cloud.
cost of downtime is $25,000 per hour. This is where the GE advantage presents itself. GE approaches the
A sophisticated paper manufacturer will have a lot of reliability problem of analytics from all angles, as is depicted in Figure 1 –
analysis systems, but offline or online with portable test kits. They Frequency dependency of analytics.
outsource the offline testing to third party companies and use the
data reactively not proactively.
EDGE CLOUD
INCREASING RISK W/O RESPONSE

Being able to detect bearing or vibration issues through electrical IICS

signal analysis represents a huge opportunity for paper mill operators
as it would allow them to detect the root cause of issues and cover
HF ANALYTICS

their full fleet from small to large motors.

PROTECTION
EQUIPMENT

C. Other Industries
Although the numbers stated reflect our current understanding of ADVANCED
Steel & Paper industries, the fact remains that the pain points are PATTERN FAULT
generally common to any process industry in which there is a large RECOGNITION LIFETIME
concentration of rotating machines. As such, the solution & services mS 1S DAYS YEARS
described in this paper will be equally applicable to other industries
such as gas separation, petrochemical, mining, etc. Figure 1: Frequency dependency of analytics

III. The GE Difference GE’s solution spans the entire spectrum of the analytics value chain,
A. Edge & Cloud Analytics employing the combination of cloud and edge analytics. This is a
compelling offering in the marketplace when coupled with GE’s over
Over the past few years, a plethora of companies capable of doing 100 years of experience in the design and manufacturing of electrical
big data analytics have been created. Those companies usually rely assets. Wherever validated asset-specific analytics exist, it will be
on agnostic algorithms that make use of historical data to create very difficult for generic analytic algorithms to compete. Obviously,
“envelopes of normality” of how a healthy asset or process operates. the development of these asset specific analytics require a sufficient
By understanding the points in time at which failures occurred, and business case, which means there must be a large enough number of
identifying the data patterns that led to those failures, the algorithms such assets in use, and the failure modes must repeat.
can “learn” to identify various failure modes as they begin to develop,
and to some extent predict when failures will occur. These methods
are undoubtedly powerful, and GE makes use of them too with great
success in multiple applications. The great advantage is that, given

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IV. Electrical Signature Analysis Real systems are more complex than the simple spring example,
but the main features remain. In particular, real systems will have
Electrical Signature Analysis (ESA) is not a new technique: the first damping associated to their modes, and damping will dissipate the
publications date back to the ’80s. However, it is a technique that energy of the system. You can represent physical systems as a large
industrially has not been exploited to its full potential until now. The combination of the different natural modes of the components When
ESA algorithms continuously monitor the stator voltage and current excited, these systems will vibrate around the frequencies dictated by
of ERMs and capture it in the form of a time series. In a continuous the complex combination of all the natural modes.
fashion, the algorithms convert those time series to the frequency
The most immediate and intuitive way of analyzing the signal resulting
domain by calculating the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of these time
from exciting a system is to look at it in the time domain—how the
series and closely monitoring for changes in the frequency domain.
signal varies with time; however, the frequency domain provides
Through years of research and experience, and thanks to a deep another mechanism for signal analysis that often provides much more
understanding of the design and failure mechanisms of ERMs, obvious and intuitive results. If, as we saw before, we have a single
different algorithms have been developed that are capable of not only mode system, the time series will be a single frequency sinusoid, and
detecting a change in the frequency domain, but also identifying the the corresponding view on the frequency domain will be a single peak
specific failure mode associated to it. at the sinusoid’s frequency. The representation of a two-mode system
The basic principle of ESA is to carry out physics based analytics on in the frequency domain will be a double peak at the frequencies of
different combinations of the current and voltage of the ERMs in order the natural modes of the system.
to detect nascent defects. However, to fully understand ESA, it is If, as we saw before, a real-world system is a large combination
important to first, understand frequency analysis. of natural modes, the time series response representation in the
frequency domain will be the combination of multiple peaks of
A. Fast Fourier Transform and the Frequency Domain different amplitudes at different frequency points.
All mechanical systems will have natural modes. When those The FFT is a mathematical transformation that allows us to convert
systems are excited by motion, they respond by vibrating around a signal from the time domain to the frequency domain, which is
the frequencies dictated by their natural modes. A first order mode useful to analyze characteristics of the signal that would go unnoticed
system will vibrate around a single frequency. A second order system in the time domain.
will vibrate around the frequencies dictated by its two natural modes.
The frequency of a natural mode or modes is linked to the physical B. The Frequency Domain and Energy
characteristics of the system. An example of a physical system is There is another interpretation of the natural modes of a system, which
depicted in Figure 2. In this example, a spring is attached to a fixed point is understood by thinking about where energy is stored when a mass on
on one side and a freely moving object on the other. The stiffness of the a spring oscillates. Energy gets exchanged as kinetic energy in the moving
spring quantified by the spring constant k and the mass of the object m mass and elastic potential energy in the compressed/stretched spring.
will determine the frequency of oscillation f if the mass is displaced from The non-ideal nature of that exchange, means that Energy gets dissipated
its initial equilibrium point and then released by the following equation: during the process. The amount of dissipation is a function is a function of
the damping mentioned in the previous section. Therefore, when looking
at the frequency domain representation of the response of a system, the
peaks will be at the frequency locations of maximum energy exchange
and dissipation. Parseval’s theorem for frequency domain analysis
approximately translated states that signal’s energy represented in the
frequency domain is equal to that same signal’s energy represented in the
Those physical characteristics do not change much over time, unless time domain; and the peaks of these signals in the frequency domain are
the system degrades or changes its physical characteristics (for points of higher energy dissipation for that signal.
example, a spring stiffness will change with temperature). Therefore, If physical system does not change over time, then its blueprint
the response will be relatively constant over time. (the normal response expected from the asset) in the frequency
domain should also remain constant. Therefore, when, over time, the
frequency representation of a signal measured in a system changes
and, for example with a spike in the frequency spectrum appearing,
the conclusions that can be reached are that:
1. Something has changed in the system.
2. There is a new element in the system in which energy is being
exchanged and dissipated at a new frequency, and since this new
frequency component has appeared over time, it could be resulting
from degradation or change of the system. That is where ESA comes in.

Figure 2. Single lossless spring/mass system under simple harmonic oscillation

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C. Failure modes of operation. This is based on a High Sensitivity Current Transformer
(HSCT), which enables online measurement of insulation capacitance and
Table 1 depicts a list of the different failure modes and electrical supply dissipation factor (C/DF) by measuring leakage currents to ground [3],[4].
parameter estimations that can be detected using ESA techniques. Not
all algorithms will be ready from the initial release of the product, but Variable speed motors are controlled via variable voltage/current and
there will be a continuous effort of validation over time. frequency, which is provided by the VFD. The common mode voltage
applied to the stator—albeit not generating any net torque due to the
D. Insulation Degradation Online Monitoring via HSCTs voltage being the same for all phases—also generates common-mode
currents that would flow through motor ground-wall insulation.
Various market studies have shown that insulation degradation
failures are over 30 percent of all failures for LV ERMs and can be as When all the six leads of the three phase stator windings are
high as 60 percent of all failures for MV and high-voltage ERMs [3]. accessible, for both line-fed and VFD fed motors, individual phase
This failure mode appears more acutely in Variable Speed ERMs, as insulation leakage currents can be measured to determine the
the high frequency switching edges induced by the VFDs stress the capacitance and dissipation factors of each phase. However, in the
insulation further and can lead to failure3. case where all six stator leads are not accessible, by measuring
the common mode insulation leakage current supplied by the VFD
The additional complication with insulation degradation failure the capacitance and dissipation factor measurement of the overall
modes is the rapid progression of the failure mode, which can range ground-wall insulation of three phases can be determined [3].
from minutes to hours.
Online insulation degradation detection using leakage current
measurements via HSCTs is a patented technique that is unique to GE [4].

TABLE I. ANALYTICS V. RMDM Platforms for ESA

The Rotating Machines Diagnostic Module (RMDM) hardware (HW)
System platform utilizes a standard industrial controller for the sampling of
Failure Mode
Components the data and algorithm execution. For both cost of development and
Outer Race Defect time to market reasons an existing product has been used.
Bearing Faults Inner Race Defect
The product has two different variants, with different HW platforms
Cage Defect
associated to them, as depicted in Figure 3.
Ins. to ground degradation
Insulation
Shorted turns
Bearing temperature RMDM B T V P H – xxx
Temperature Stator Temperature
Machine Thermal Model – xxx – Environmental Option
– ATX = ATEX Environment
Rotor Bars Broken Rotor Bars – MAR = Marine Environment
Mixed Eccentricity
H – Insulation Degradation Option
Foundation Looseness
— = no HSCT
Mechanical Vibration Discrete Tone Identifier H = HSCT option
Vibration RMS
P – Power Supply Option
Bent Rotor Shaft
0 = no power supply
Voltage Total Harmonic Distortion 1 = power supply option
Current Total Harmonic Distortion
>0 & <0 Sequence Voltage V – Vibration Option
0 = no vibration
Electrical Supply >0 & <0 Sequence Current
1 = vibration option
Current Harmonics
Energy Usage (trend only) T – Temperature Option
Efficiency Estimation (trend only) 0 = no temperature
1 = temperature option
B – Product Variant
1 = PECe Lite Based – 1 or 2 Motors/Generators Max
3 = Rxi Based – Up to 20 motors
Traditionally, there have been two main approaches to detect
insulation degradation before it happens, both employing different Figure 3. RMDM Product Variants
offline methods. These methods require taking the ERMs out of
operation and therefore, cause a loss of productive time. There are
also online partial discharge detection systems available but they A. Series 100x – PECe Lite Based
normally require an expert engineer to interpret the data and truly The initial platform chosen was the PECe Lite, which is a low cost
assess the insulation system state. industrial controller used in LV VFDs. This controller has very fast
GE’s GRC has developed a novel method for detecting insulation I/O capabilities, as it was designed as a power electronics control
degradation issues which does not require the asset to be taken out platform. That fast I/O characteristic has been used to sample current

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and voltage up to 5 kHz, which, as discussed above, is the frequency A. Connectivity and Edge Diagnostics
required for the most complex ESA algorithms.
1. RMDM
Although the system is a 12-bit system, via oversampling, the equivalent
accuracy of a 16-bit system is achieved, which allows it to match the The RMDM box represented by is located on the edge of the
resolutions achieved by more expensive commercial systems. architecture. It is directly connected to the ERMs, and there are a variety
of mechanisms to achieve that, in large ERMs, sometimes spare Current
The 10x version is capable of monitoring 1 or 2 ERMs depending on Transformers (CTs) and Voltage Transducers (VTs) are incorporated
whether we include or not High Sensitivity Current Transformers (HSTC). in the terminal box so that, should one fail, there are others readily
available. Given the low cost of sensors, this is common practice. Where
B. Series 300x – RXi Based this is the case, the spare sensors can be used. If there are no spare
The 300 series uses the high-performance version of the PECe Lite, sensors, but there’s enough space in the terminal box, additional CTs
the RXi controller, which offers a higher power processor. This allows and VTs can be incorporated. In the case of VFD ERMss, it is possible to
the controller to monitor more than one motor by, connecting multiple leverage the information from the analogue signals that are connected
motors via a fast-sampling I/O and examining all the motors in a round into the drives for speed and torque control. In the case of GE’s VFDs,
robin configuration. the algorithms will run directly in the VFD controller as a low priority
To process FFTs and obtain sufficiently accurate results, you need a process not to interfere with the main controller operation. In LV ERMs,
continuously sampled data set that is stable over the entire window sometimes an additional sensor box needs to be inserted in those lines.
of data. The operating system of the controller, called HPCi, will In MV Drives, there is usually enough space in the control cabinet to
store time series from all motors connected, sequencing between install the RMDM there and make use of the existing IOs.
them, analyze which of the time-series collected is adequate for FFT 2. FieldAgent
calculation, and once it’s found such a sample, perform the FFT and
The different RMDMs will communicate via MODBUS with the
the ESA analytics.
FieldAgent (FA), represented by , which is the device in charge of
The approach brings Edge analytics to almost any ERMs application. securely transmitting information to Predix, and it has the capability
The advantage of this configuration is that, for a high number of of running Edge Analytics. The FieldAgent will be connected directly
motors, there is a dramatic reduction in the cost of deploying to the MODBUS channel, so that it can capture all the down sampled
monitoring on each ERMs. This is a step change in the practicality of time series from the RMDMs, but also, information from the drives and
deploying monitoring, therefore achieving a truly disruptive solution, from any third-party devices existing in the network, represented by
to large processes. Ø, of which we want to transmit and store the information.
The FieldAgent is a secure, cost-effective, preconfigured gateway that
C. Functionality
is easy to deploy across distributed fleets of assets. It is a universal
The conversion of the relevant signals from the time domain to the solution, meaning a Field Agent can collect data from nearly any
frequency domain along with the ESA algorithms execute in the RMDM intelligent device. It requires virtually no IT support from the end user.
box. Once an algorithm raises an alarm, the alarm is communicated to Once configured, Field Agent devices can be installed and transmitting
APM and a high-frequency snapshot of data is uploaded to the cloud data to the cloud in a matter of minutes.
for storage and further analysis.
3. Visor Connect Box
In addition, the RMDM box will also take periodic snapshots of high-
The Visor Connect Box (VCB), represented by , is the solution from
frequency data and upload it for storage in the cloud. The RMDM box
GE’s Power Conversion business for secure, remote accessibility to its
also contains functionality to accept remote triggers of data snapshots.
drives and other proprietary devices based on the High-Performance
Controller for Industry (HPCi) SW platform.
VI. Connectivity Architecture The VCB is a GE product with 20 years’ experience and hundreds of
Establishing the correct architecture is as important as having the units shipped. The Visor* Service Portal is GE’s own secure remote
right building blocks. This properly designed architecture brings access point to all of GE’s equipment via the VCB. The VCB provides
everything together and allows for: the following functionality:
1. Simple and safe connectivity of the sensors at site. • Remote connectivity for service engineering.
2. Reliable transmission of the data to the Predix cloud, with • Storage of all information pertinent to the site.
cybersecurity at the core. •2
 56 gigabytes of local storage of historical site data (90 days),
3. Accessibility of that data by the service team who will be including time-series data (analogue and digital).
making data-driven decisions. •A
 utomated archiving of historical site data onto portable media
4. Scalability to enable the system to grow over time as more or remote transfer via ftp.
assets get integrated and monitored. • 100+ industrial protocols compatible.
Figure 4 shows the connectivity architecture devised for this specific • Drive trips notification for PEC/PECe-based devices.
application. From left to right, the three main areas are mapped and
will be elaborated below. • Automatic service case management on system fault.
• Two or three (for dual network sites) firewalls to isolate the VCB from
admin and control networks and provide a secure DMZ zone.
As the RMDM is also based on HPCi, the VCB is also used to provide
analytics and SW remote upgrades to ensure that the most accurate
level of prognostics is always available on-site.

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 Connectivity and edge Analytics and data
diagnostics management O&M services

RMDM
NETWORK
FIELD
Electrical
AGENT DIGITAL Analytics as
Web -
Graphical User
Optimization
Arc SERVICES a Service Interfaces Services Advanced
Furnace Analytics –
Prognostics
APM Equipment Reliability Process
Heat ASSET PERFORMANCE Health Magment Optmiz
Exchanger MANAGEMENT
Remote Service
PREDIX TM CLOUD Engineer
EC
Service
Assets Analytics Data Security Operations
Motor + Drive Portal

Cloud Foundry

Data Infrastructure
EXPERT SERVICES
• Parts, Upgrades, Repairs
• Automation Experts
• SW Engineers
• Specialist Field Service Engineers
VISOR CONNECT BOX
14

Figure 4. Example of Standard Connectivity Architecture

B. Analytics and Data Management

As discussed above, the FA will securely transmit information to the Level 0: Service Contact Center
Predix Cloud. Once in Predix, the time series will be stored in the data • Receive call or email
lake for future usage. The fault indices and alarms will also be stored • Update or create installed base record
and time stamped to the time series to ensure that future trending of • Open case and assign to local
alarms versus time series leading to those alarms is possible. service office
All alarms are accessible via APM, which is the main point of data • Email notification to case initiator
consumption for both the customer and the M&D engineers. Within case number for follow up
APM, asset models that cover all ERMs technologies are created, so
that we can correlate and trend failure modes with respect to different Level 1: Local Service Office
ERMs technologies, sizes and technical characteristics. • Initial response
Within the APM product, a site hierarchy that will represent the • Regional response
customer plant and process will be created. • Case ownership

Digital services, which will be explained below, are offered, leveraging

the data contained within this architecture. Level 2: Tech Support
• Product escalated issue
C. O&M Services • Global support

Once the data is in APM, it is critical to have a support organization

capable of monitoring the data and responding with added value Level 3: Product Service Engineering
insights once an issue arises. • Dedicated experts
• Drives resolution within engineering
The support organization is in charge of driving internal processes and • Knowledge database
actions to deliver the customers’ multi-year agreements.
A strong service organization begins by a strong support organization, Level 4: Platform Engineering
and this, together with the intimate knowledge of industrial assets • Complex technical solutions
and applications, and our edge-to-cloud solutions, are some of the • Root cause analysis
key features of differentiation that GE has from other companies with • Fleet and design issues
offerings in this market, such as Microsoft or IBM.
The support organization is organized in different levels. As the
Figure 5. Remote Support Structure
complexity of the problem increases, its resolution is passed to
different levels of support [5].

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VII. Service Offerings O&M expenditure reduction is one of the biggest benefits of GE
Digital’s APM solution. This maintenance optimization option is
For a service offering to be successful, it needs to be tailored to the targeted at GE leveraging the benefits of APM to reduce the O&M cost
specific industry and application, as only then we will be certain that and, in return, offering an O&M contract to the customer.
we are targeting the customer’s real problems.
APM’s Maintenance Optimization package applied to other industries
GE has devised a series of building blocks to help create specific has yielded results of up to 20% reduction in O&M costs. Leveraging
agreements that should span across industries, and should be then this tool by our services team, compounded with the expertise of our
further tailored as needed. service organization compared as that of the customers, will help in
achieving lower overall O&M costs for the customer.
A. L1 – Equipment Assurance
This will be the entry service level offering, targeted at connecting C. L3 – Performance Optimization
the assets and offering proactive insights based on the analytics. The performance optimization service is the highest level of service
This service level will include a dedicated fleet manager, which will agreement we provide. It should always be linked to specific
be the GE customer liaison, in charge of customer experience. This is outcomes that are of importance to the customer, such as reduction
common to all service levels, the connectivity to site, the application of unplanned downtime, increased availability or throughput, and
of asset-specific analytics and the access to the support org, which optimization of energy usage. The L3 service offering needs to be
will provide data-based insights. Since no process monitoring is studied on a case-by-case basis, as there will always be a period of
envisioned, only the use of existing dashboards can be offered. benchmarking and configuration before the service agreement will
begin paying dividends. This is required for the algorithms to be tuned
B. L2 – Maintenance Optimization and for enough historical data to be gained to ensure we have enough
Operations and maintenance (O&M) is one of the main lines of understanding of current performance levels.
expenditures for process manufacturing companies. As an example, Every service level will have a set of features. It will be beyond the
a hot rolling steel mill O&M budget is >$30 million/year, of which scope of this document to describe in detail each one of them, but
approximately half will be dedicated to electrical assets. more information can be found in [6].

See what's wrong L1 L2 L3

Level 1 | Equipment Insights Equipment Maintenance Performance
We help to increase uptime assurance Optimization Optimization
and reduce OPEX through Contract Management l l l
prognostics based
Remote Connectivity and accessibility ü ü ü
equipment insights.
Visor and Field Agent l l l
On-site monitoring system hardware
Edge Diagnostic o o o
Optimize OPEX
Level 2 | Maintenance Site l l l
Operational Dashboards
Optimization Enterprise o o o
Lower OPEX and optimize
Call you back l l l
inventory levels by brining Remote Support
all the plant information to 24hr service/monitoring o o o
optimize your maintenance FSE on call Availability o o o
operations and provide Advisory Services l l l
operators the right Asset Analytics
Support on performance deviation o l l
information at the right time.
Periodic Report o l

De-risk your operation Custom Analytics o o o

Level 3 | Performance Planned l l
Maintenance
Optimization Unplanned o o
Focus on customer selected
Condition Based Maintenance Recommendations l l
process KPIs for optimization.
Increase yield, throughput, Spare Parts Management l l
quality, uptime, through process Advisory Services l l
based analytics at plant level. Process Performance
Support on Performance Deviation l
Outcome Based
Contractual Service Agreement o
Service Agreement
Extend this to performance Cyber Security Assessments o o o
warranties and derisk your Initial spare parts package o l l
operation with a full MYA. Customer provided warehouse ü ü ü

l Included within Service level o Optional ü To be provided by customer

Figure 6. Service Level Offerings

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VIII. Customer Benefits C. Inventory Management Optimization
Within the scope of this program, there has been an intense focus on Large process-driven industries, for example a paper mill, which as
understanding what customer problem we are trying to solve. The described above can have up to 4,000 motors, will carry millions
initial assumptions were based around uptime and O&M reduction, and of dollars in spares inventory. It is customary that LV motors, for
our initial discussions were focused on validating these assumptions. example, are not maintained, spares are kept on the shelf and then
Discovery sessions were set with a large quantity of customers. We replaced once a failure occurs.
validated our assumptions in some marketplaces, and in some others, The effect of this is that, given the variety of motor technologies and
we had to pivot. The main conclusions are described below. types, a large amount of capital is tied up in inventory.

A. Avoidance of Unplanned Downtime By monitoring a larger quantity of motors than before, and thanks to
GE’s service organization, Motor Fleet APM can trigger alarms when a
As discussed in the market section, unplanned downtime is a motor health issue occurs that, given the unique identifiers associated
multibillion dollar industry problem that applies equally to process to each motor, will launch purchasing and dispatch of the specific
applications and critical applications. As seen in time although there motors within 24 hours.
is a predictable component of failures that can be addressed through
periodic maintenance, there is a large component of random failure, D. Quality and Process Improvements
on which periodic maintenance has little to no effect.
Product quality is of paramount significance, directly affecting a
By detecting equipment health degradation issues in Electrical company’s reputation and its revenues.
Rotating Machines (ERMs), and in the future other assets, before
they fail, GE can provide the operators with proactive notifications If the process is not running the way it should be, it affects productivity
so they can schedule interventions in the next planned outage. as well as the quality, leading to material waste and lower margin, as
Process industries will generally have periodic stoppages for planned finished products that fail to meet the required quality standard will
maintenance activities, and any repairs that happen during that time have to be scrapped, reworked or sold at a discounted price.
do not contribute to loss of profit. Detecting quality and process variation, however, is a much tougher
challenge than detecting motor failures, as it entails the step up
Slow aging from asset health models to a process health model. Slight process
deviations from its standard operational envelopes will not directly
Best new stop the process or lead to quality issues in the current batch, but will
Constant random failure be an indication of downstream quality issues.
68% Worst new 5% Therefore, the steps towards addressing and improving on quality
issues pass through monitoring and mapping the process as a hole and
14% 7% creating the Digital Twin of the process. The Digital Twin is a detailed
mathematical representation that, run in parallel to the real process,
will compare the simulated output with the real output and will both
estimate fatigue issues and raise flags on performance deviations.
The building of a digital twin for a customer’s process is a complex process
(Primarily random wear) 89% on which GE has demonstrable experience; it needs to be addressed on a
case by case basis and commissioned as a standalone project.
Figure 7. Distribution of failures with time
E. Energy Efficiency
B. O&M Optimization Process industries are hugely energy intensive, as evidenced by the
fact that the chemical, paper and steel industries are three of the
O&M expenditures are one of the main line items of industrial top four most energy-intensive industries in the U.S., with the steel
manufacturing companies. A steel mill will spend >$30 million on O&M industry by itself consuming 5.2 percent of the total energy consumed
per year. Some of the tasks will be done by internal personnel, but in in the U.S. manufacturing sector [5].
general, plant maintenance is largely outsourced to third-party service
companies. While they routinely perform the maintenance tasks during When looking for profitability, energy is one of the top focus items, and
planned plant downtime, that approach simply cannot guarantee to direct line of actions addressing energy usage are being taken by some of
prevent the plant from future unplanned outages, given that random the leading steel companies. Energy prices not only play a role because
failures will continue to occur, as can be seen in Figure 7 [7]. of the direct cost impact of energy consumption; in addition, energy price
volatility acts as an additional risk factor for operational costs.
In order to future proof the manufacturing processes, a more
intelligent maintenance approach is needed to help companies Energy efficiency measures will follow a parallel path to that of quality
maintain rotating machinery in a cost-effective manner as well as to improvements, in that, to have a significant impact, it will not be
achieve long-term cost targets. addressed by motors only, but we need to have a holistic process view.

Motor Fleet APM’s data-driven approach will enable a shift from

calendar-based towards predictive maintenance – only to carry out
the maintenance required when it’s truly needed to avoid equipment
shutdown or premature failure.

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F. Business Intelligence
The growing trend of mergers and acquisition activities as industries
consolidate has caused a dilution of skills and experience in some areas.
Lack of standard practices has further resulted in fragmented and uneven
performance across plants. Different data acquisition mechanisms,
alarms, triggers, fault descriptions also pose a challenge for global
companies to obtain data insights across facilities, which, in turn, limits
their ability to achieve cost and process improvement at a global level.
Using APM, all data can be analyzed, giving a complete view of the
entire process – even when split across several plants. This central
and holistic view could be applied not just to supply chains, but to
plant performance across multiple sites.
A connected approach enables one single data repository to retain
knowledge, process information and deliver accurate analytics.
Operators can assess the real-time performance of any plant anywhere
for global benchmarking and smarter decision-making, driven by data
(rather than local experience alone). Best practices can therefore be
identified, modelled and then scaled globally for consistent, efficient
performance across a business, irrespective of location.
IX. Commercial Approach
The commercial model around this project is going to be heavily
dependent upon the final application, but generically, we can divide in two.
A. Process Applications
By this we refer to applications such as metals, paper, gas separation,
petrochemical, in which there is a large quantity of motors per site,
some of which will be critical, some of which will not be critical, but
which failures will still drive significant losses and maintenance costs.
In these types of applications, the digital services agreement will take the
form of an outcome-based contract, incorporating customer KPIs against
which performance will be measured and an associated LD/bonus regime.
Value
Selling = Base Price
Proposal
Deployment
+ Licenses
Figure 8. Value Pricing Structure
The deployment of the contract will be done such that there will be an
initial phase for benchmarking to ensure that the historical information
and targets agreed with the customer are correct. The specific period
of baselining will be dependent upon the actual application, frequency
of failures, as enough failures need to occur before having a significant
sample that we can consider the benchmark. This period will also be
used to ensure that the diagnostics algorithms are working properly and
to tune the thresholds to provide an acceptable level of false positives/
false negatives. If historical data is available, then the benchmarking
period can be substantially reduced or even eliminated.
After the benchmarking period, the service agreement will start and, once
proven successful to the customer, we can start working on extending the
scope to additional opportunities/assets for the same customer.
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Y1 Y2
H1 H2 H1 H2
Baselining
Execution
Additional Assets
Figure 9. Roadmap of Activities
B. Critical Applications
By this, we refer to applications such as LNGs, marine or power, in which
the number of ERMs is reduced. They tend to be of large size, and events
occur rarely, but when they occur, they drive significant losses. The
ERMs are normally a critical part of the application.
In these applications, creating an outcome-based service agreement
built on avoidance of downtime is challenging, as events will happen
spaced in time, and the avoided loss of revenue from utilizing Motor
Fleet APM is hard to quantify.
The commercial approach for these type of applications is a more
traditional monitoring and diagnostics-based contract, with a yearly fee
where we incorporate other services, such as field service availability or
periodic reports.
X. Methodology – FastWorks
FastWorks was thoroughly applied during the development. This was
an ideal candidate for a FastWorks development as:
1. There was no initial prejudice as to what the product and service
might look like. There was an enormous amount of ambiguity and
+
_ Risk/Reward ill-definition at the start of the development.
2. It was clear to all team members that the business case and
commercialization model were to be key to the success of the program.
3. The development had been attempted at least four times before
Incentivised and failed each time, never due to technical failures.
A cross-functional team was set in place from the beginning of the
development, including marketing, sales, engineering, program
management and product management. A set of Leap of Faith
Assumptions (LOFAs) was created which represented every point
where the team believed the program could trip or fail. The LOFAs
were categorized as important and urgent, as per the chart below.
Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), which were not physical products,
but a set of experiments targeted at de-risking specific set of LOFAs,
were devised.
The first LOFA was “We understand the customer problem,” to,
precisely, challenge every pre-conceived assumption the team had
around the customer problem. The MVP 1 was focused on ensuring
that we had a good understanding of where the value was.
MVP 2 was targeted at technically de-risking the solution enough to
ensure that, should we have an order, we could execute. The technical
XI. Future Developments
team was lean—two full-time engineers and one partial time technical
A. Near Term
leader, with support from the GRC—and the intent was never to
develop anything that was not immediately focused on de-risking a The development to date has been focused around detecting health
LOFA. By the time the team obtained the first bookable LOC, barely of the motors and predicting failure modes. Transmission of data into
$150,000 had been spent on the program. Predix and alarm detection and logging in APM has also been achieved.
Moving forward, the team intends to deploy these algorithms in new GE
The FastWorks development of the program was challenging, as the
Power HW Platforms—such as drives, AVRs, motor protection relays,
team had to mature in their understanding of FastWorks during the
motor control centers—reinforcing the point that the value is on the
implementation. A pragmatic approach was undertaken, leveraging
algorithms, reducing the cost of deployment, creating upgrade solutions
the spirit of FastWorks and Lean/Agile Principles.
into our installed base and therefore, enabling new service models.
Some rework and revalidation was required as we had not fully
Direct integration into motors and generators is also desirable, as it
bounded and scoped our hypotheses, measures and tests to know if
would allow to commercialize “smart motors,” which self-diagnostic
we had (in)validated our LOFAs. However, the benefit of this was that
capabilities.
it forced us to go deeper to discover the root assumptions which gave
the team key insights to what the customer really needs. A new dedicated HW platform also needs to be created for cost
optimization in those instances in which another HW platform is not
There was a single team meeting every week, rigidly limited to one
readily available.
hour. The team ran the call as a whole, self-organizing, with no leader,
and during that meeting we reviewed two key metrics: The integration of Motor Fleet APM into GE’s digital platforms needs to be
deepened. Since we can target different industries, which will have different
1. Say/Do ratio of the actions agreed the week before.
use cases and pain points, it would be interesting to create “segment-
2. Actions next week – and for every action the team would keep dedicated solutions” (digital metals, digital paper), that would bring
highlighted what LOFA it was attempted at de-risking. together Motor Fleet APM with brilliant manufacturing and APM to carry
It would be untruthful to say we never carried out any action that was out prognostics on other types of assets and create the Digital Twins of the
not targeted at de-risking some LOFA, but those actions were debated. processes required for energy optimization and quality improvements.

B. Long Term
LOFA Matrix There are different levels of analytic algorithms that can be provided [7],
see Figure 11, which are described below.
15 3 Descriptive: What is happening now based on incoming data. Typically,
Bet one 10 we use standard SCADA and MES screens within the GE Digital Brilliant
year 18 12 Execution portfolio for providing on-premises descriptive analytics.
Salary 16
Diagnostics: A look at past performance to determine what happened
4 2 22
and why. An example in the GE Digital Brilliant Execution portfolio for
providing on-premises diagnostics analytics is the use of Pareto charts
11 for down-time analysis.
Bet one Predictive: An analysis of likely scenarios of what might happen. The
month 19 deliverables are usually a predictive forecast.
Salary
Prescriptive: This type of analysis reveals what actions should be
24 8 30 21
taken. This is the most valuable kind of analysis and usually results in
17
rules and recommendations for next steps.
29 23 20 1 6
7 5 Today, we provide predictive analytics to unclutter operator
Bet
no 28 27 14 information. We need to create a database of failure modes and link
Salary 9 them to actual actions that were undertaken to solve them and grow
43 the system towards providing prescriptive analytics.
26 25 As we store more information, both time series and failure modes of
Tweak Revise Strategy Show Stopper rotating machines in the data lake, we need to start exploring that data
and creating fleet-wide analytics.

Figure 10. LOFA Prioritization Matrix Linked to the above, once we gather more experience and have
multiple samples of machine blueprints in the frequency domain, it
should be possible to use the tool to help during the factory acceptance
test of new machines. This would, in principle, allow for remote
factory acceptance tests that would have a beneficial impact on our
manufacturing costs.

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 References
Descriptive [1] IHS, LV Motors and MV Motors Reports, 2016
Analytics [2] Ernst Worrell, Paul Blinde, Maarten Neelis, Eliane Blomen, and
What is Eric Masanet, Energy Efficiency Improvement and Cost Saving
happening? Opportunities for the U.S. Iron and Steel Industry
[3] P
 rabhakar Neti, Karim Younsi, Pinjia Zhang, A novel online stator
ground-wall insulation monitoring scheme for inverter fed AC-Motors.
[4] K . Younsi, P. Neti, M. Shah, Y. Zhou, and C. Whitefield,
Prescriptive Diagnostic “High Sensitivity Differential Current Transformer for Insulation
Analytics Analytics Health Monitoring,” US Patent 8,421,442, April 16, 2013
What should I Why did
do about it? it happen? [5] Stuart Gray, Houston Digital Services presentation (GE internal)
[6] Sergio Dominguez, Motor Fleet APM Service Levels Description
(GE internal)
[7] F.S. Nowlan, H.F. Heap, Reliability-Centered Maintenance
Predictive [8] BMS Team, BMs Overview June 2017 v16.
Analytics
What is likely
to happen? Authors
Sergio Dominguez, Product Leader, GE Power
Luke Solomon, PhD, Technical Leader, GE Power
Figure 11. Different types of analytics
Simon Baggott, Marketing Leader, GE Power
Stuart Gray, Technical Services Leader, GE Power
Andrew Ireland, FastWorks Coach, GE Power

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About GE
GE is the world’s Digital Industrial Company, transforming industry
with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected,
responsive and predictive. GE is organized around a global exchange
of knowledge, the ‘GE Store’, through which each business shares
and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect.
Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our
industrial sectors. Through its people, services, technology and scale,
GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language
of industry. To learn more, please visit www.ge.com.

About GE Power Conversion

GE’s Power Conversion business, a business unit of GE Energy
Connections, applies the science and systems of power conversion
to help drive the electric transformation of the world’s energy
infrastructure. It does so by designing and delivering advanced motor,
drive and control technologies that evolve today’s industrial processes
for a cleaner, more productive future. Serving specialized sectors
such as energy, marine, renewables and industry, through customized
solutions and advanced technologies, GE Power Conversion partners
with customers to maximize efficiency.

gepowerconversion.com

*Trademark of General Electric Company.

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whole or in part, without prior permission of the copyright owner.

GE Power reserves the right to make changes in specifications and features shown herein, or discontinue
the product described at any time without notice or obligation. Contact your GE Power representative for
the most current information. GE and the GE Monogram are trademarks of General Electric Company.
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