Sound assessment diagnoses machine faults

Signarc is a novel quality control service with technology to detect product quality by assessing and diagnosing sounds and vibrations emanating from motors, drives or other moving parts.

Signarc is a quality control service with technology to detect product quality by assessing and diagnosing sounds and vibrations emanating from motors, drives, or other moving parts.

The Signarc solution is composed of an abnormal sound diagnosis system, waveform analysis diagnosis service, assessment knowledge formation service, system operations service and system consulting service.

Signarc is supported by two proprietary technologies developed at Omron's R and D HQ Control Technology Laboratory: waveform analysis diagnosis technology and knowledge formation technology.

To assess product condition or identify the cause of a malfunction, a microphone and an acceleration sensor are used, capturing waveforms of a product's sound and vibration emissions.

40 sets of characteristics are quantified with the waveform analysis diagnosis and the meaning of each of these waveforms is understood.

Knowledge formation technology is then used to match these quantified characteristics with the knowhow of trained inspectors.

As a result, human comparison, conducted to achieve quality assessment on the level of "fine" or "not fine", can be quantified, to answer the question: "is there something wrong, and to what degree?".

For example, identification of the cause and the degree of the defect might be expressed as "general assessment defect level 95" or "valve clearance defect level 80".

In shifting from components sales to the service business, Omron has created a new business model.

The brand name, Signarc, comes from the "signals" inspectors can read from the data produced by Omron's proprietary waveform analysis diagnosis technology, and the long, smooth "arc" envisioned connecting Omron with customers through the provision of high added-value solutions.

Against the qualitative, relative, and implicit intelligence of conventional human inspection, Signarc is characterised by quantitative, absolute, format type inspections.

Highly skilled examiners conduct inspections of product drive parts.

With this kind of inspection, fluctuation in quality assessment standards and product defect overlooking occur due to differences in the degree of skill for each examiner, age, physical condition, etc.

Among other issues, assessment feedback is inevitably qualitative and relative, and a means of passing on skilled inspectors' tacit knowledge to future generations posed a challenge.

Signarc, on the other hand, does not respond with a simple "fine" or "not fine", but answers the questions "how bad is it?" and "where is the problem?" - specific quantitative figures indicating the level of defect and cause of malfunction.

Signarc contributes not only through early apprehension/treatment of the malfunction in the event of a product defect, but also improves product quality by making possible quantitative management of assessment feedback.

Signarc is capable of quantifying sound and identifying causes of defects, so it can be applied not just to inspection lines, but to total product quality improvement in raw material and design improvement carried out by development/design functions, product quality control/assurance functions etc.

Signarc is not limited to product quality assessment.

The capability of quantifying sound and identifying causes of defects allows Signarc to be applied in various services for sensual research fields/development divisions, answering such questions as, "what sort of sound is preferred by people", or "what sound best fits this product image?".

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