Objectives and content

The VISION Project aims to develop a system for performing automatic diagnosis of the condition of a large section of the rotating machinery in use in European industry. The technology will be an advance on systems currently available, which do not give industrial users sufficiently reliable results for them to have confidence in basing their maintenance strategies and actions on their output.

The application of condition monitoring to rotating machinery has been identified as a significant source of potential benefit to European industry in studies such as EBSOM (the European Benchmark Study on Maintenance). Whilst the level of application of condition monitoring is increasing, in many areas it is either not adopted at all, or is failing to reap proper rewards, because of the difficult and subjective nature of data analysis, particularly where vibration data is concerned. Attempts to automate this process have so far been relatively unsuccessful in providing a tool which will allow European companies to confidently apply condition monitoring to their plant. The VISION Project aims to develop the technology necessary for such a tool.
One key aspect of the approach taken by the VISION Project will be the use of simulation techniques to provide a model of industrial plant, which will be verified in the development stages using test rigs. The verification of the simulation using real data is necessary to ensure that the diagnostic system which is developed is valid for the class of machines to which it is applied. The diagnostic system, which is another key point in the VISION Project, will be based on artificial intelligence techniques, particularly artificial neural networks (ANNs). This system will be developed adaptively by using the output of the simulation models to teach the diagnostic system about the characteristics of the plant. Once the system is trained, it will be de-coupled from the simulation model and used to analyse and interpret data from real-world plant, and provide diagnostic advice to maintenance and plant engineers in a wide range of industrial sectors.

The VISION Project Consortium includes a number of industrial partners, including ABB, Nestle UK, Doveurope, and Carnaud Metalbox; partners from the United Kingdom, Finland, France, and Greece are participating in the Project. This structure gives the VISION Project strength in resources, experience, and a wide range of industrial sectors and applications, which will ensure that the end result of the Project is a robust and reliable solution which is relevant to a large section of European industry.