Predictronics had a rewarding experience at the Valve Industry Knowledge Forum in Birmingham, Alabama, hosted by the Valve Manufacturers Association.

The Valve Manufacturers Association of America is a trade association that has for 80 years represented North American manufacturers of valves, actuators and controls. The nearly 100 members of this organization collectively produce close to 80% of the total industrial shipments out of US and Canadian facilities.

CEO Dr. Edzel Lapira and IoTco CEO Dr. Mohamed Abuali hosted a talk at the forum, "Enabling Smart Factories and Smart Products," as part of the manufacturing education track.

Their session appealed to industry leaders in various stages of their digital transformation, as it highlighted the necessary steps to incorporating industrial predictive analytics on the shop floor and achieving full-scale digitization.

Also featured at the conference was our unique end-to-end predictive analytics and industrial AI solution, PDX, which collects, analyzes, monitors, and visualizes data to pinpoint potential failures and allow for planned downtime and maintenance. Dr. Lapira presented one of our PDX case studies which demonstrates the real-world application of predictive monitoring algorithms to detect early faults in control valves.

As valves are an integral component to various industrial applications, including water, air, and gas systems, as well as food and beverage production and biopharmaceutical processing, the impact of this solution is both broad and substantial. Maintaining a competitive edge is key, and a significant opportunity exists for OEMs to offer predictive services to end-users, as well as to adopt similar technologies in their own production facilities.

The approach of our case study correlates the health index with common valve issues, such as travel deviation and increased friction, forecasts the degradation and failure of unhealthy valves, and warns the user when health thresholds are crossed, allowing the company to prevent unnecessary downtime and reduce wasted resources.

There are numerous other benefits to utilizing an automated data analysis method over human inspection. During outages or other periods of valve diagnosis, the traditional manual evaluation requires a great deal of human manpower and resources, along with vast expertise and domain knowledge.

Through predictive solutions, further valve signature tests can be performed to measure and characterize the health condition and performance of a valve, providing more accurate assessments.

This affords valve manufacturers the opportunity to be proactive and judicious in their decision-making, helping to prioritize maintenance scheduling and streamline business operations.

Overall, the Valve Industry Knowledge Forum gave valve manufacturers and solutions providers a gathering place to promote education within the technical, manufacturing, and marketing & management areas of the valve industry.

NIST Cybersecurity Program Manager Pat Toth presented the keynote address, "Cybersecurity in the Industrial Sector,” underscoring the importance of managing cyber risks and vulnerabilities when digitizing your manufacturing environment. These threats are one of the major issues affecting the industry at large.

“This is a very timely and appropriate central topic across all sectors of industry, not just the manufacturing arena. Many have an appetite for advanced technology that is rapidly exceeding their ability to protect their own business. If not done securely, the introduction of IoT technologies can leave the shop floor vulnerable and susceptible to cyber intrusion and attacks,” said Dr. Edzel Lapira.

Other notable forum speakers and attendees at this year's conference include Emerson Automation Solutions, Crane ChemPharma & Energy, and Metso Flow Control.

If you didn’t get a chance to join us at the event and you would like to request more information and a demo or if you have an application in mind for our software and services, please email us at contact@predictronics.com.