Company K, an equipment maintenance company, is contracted by one of its clients, a television station, to perform the maintenance and operation of communication equipment cabinets at relay stations. Mr. J of Company K had this to say:
"Many of the unmanned relay stations are installed in remote locations or mountainous areas with poor transportation access. Whenever a problem occurs with the equipment, we have to secure parts and personnel and send them to the site as quickly as possible. Of course, operations continued smoothly, but when a sudden breakdown occurs, it is difficult to procure parts and adjust worker schedules... We were always thinking about whether we could do maintenance in a more planned manner," said J.
What Mr. J particularly placed importance on was fan operation.
"Telecommunications equipment cabinets are equipped with cooling fans to ensure stable operation of the equipment. The fans are equipped with a lock sensor that sounds an alarm when the fan stops, so that we can respond immediately if it stops. However, we have to wait until the alarm goes off before we can secure personnel, so if we are unable to arrange the personnel properly, it can take a long time to carry out maintenance, which could result in thermal runaway or other problems that could affect the operation of the entire telecommunications equipment," says J.
Mr. J wanted to be able to know the appropriate timing for fan replacement in advance and perform maintenance in a planned manner.
When Mr. J attended an industrial equipment exhibition for engineers, he consulted about these issues at SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. 's booth.
After hearing about the issues, the SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. representative suggested to Mr. J that they combine a pulse sensor-equipped fan with PWM control function with the San Ace Controller.
"The fan they proposed was equipped with a pulse sensor that could detect rotation speed and had PWM control function could control the fan's rotation speed. By combining this with a controller and temperature and humidity sensor, we can measure the fan's status, such as rotation speed, current, and accumulated operating time, in real time. Not only can it be monitored remotely from a PC, smartphone, or other device, but it can also sound alarms by setting thresholds. This will make it possible to determine the timing of replacement in advance, which we hope will lead to preventive maintenance." (J)
Mr. J was very intrigued, and after discussing the details internally, he decided to adopt the proposal and introduced it to some relay stations as a first step. Mr. J had this to say about the effects of the introduction:
"Being able to visualize the fan operating status has enabled us to plan maintenance and allocate personnel more efficiently. In addition, by combining it with temperature and humidity sensors, we were able to set conditions based on the measured values and automatically control each fan to maintain the optimum rotation speed, which also led to energy savings. As the measured data can be stored in the cloud and used flexibly, we hope to make maintenance even more efficient."
Going forward, the company plans to introduce the San Ace Controller and fans with pulse sensor-based PWM control function to all of its relay stations.
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