Maintenance prediction through sensing using hidden markov models—a case study

The availability maximization is a goal for any organization because the equipment downtime implies high non-production costs and, additionally, the abnormal stopping and restarting usually imply loss of product’s quality. In this way, a method for predicting the equipment’s health state is vital to maintain the production flow as well as to plan maintenance intervention strategies. This paper presents a maintenance prediction approach based on sensing data managed by Hidden Markov Models (HMM). To do so, a diagnosis of drying presses in a pulp industry is used as case study, which is done based on data collected every minute for three years and ten months. This paper presents an approach to manage a multivariate analysis, in this case merging the values of sensors, and optimizing the observable states to insert into a HMM model, which permits to identify three hidden states that characterize the equipment’s health state: “Proper Function”, “Alert state”, and “Equipment Failure”. The research described in this paper demonstrates how an equipment health diagnosis can be made using the HMM, through the collection of observations from various sensors, without information of machine failures occurrences. The approach developed demonstrated to be robust, even the complexity of the system, having the potential to be generalized to any other type of equipment.