Having your equipment go down or underperform on the job costs your company dearly. Condition monitoring technology allows you to remotely determine the health of your assets, wherever you are. This means immediate access to accurate and reliable information about your assets, even on your phone.
With this information on hand, you’ll be able to make quick decisions to minimise downtime and ensure your fleet is always running at optimal efficiency. Missing production targets because of downtime and poor performance will be a thing of the past!
WesTrac uses a combination of technologies to let you know how your assets are performing and it all starts with Cat® Product Link™. Product Link is a piece of hardware attached to your machine that wirelessly sends usage and production data to the cloud, where you access it using an online web application like VisionLink or the FitFleet® portal.
These applications are easy-to-use, display your machine data in a graphical format, and can be quickly accessed wherever you are, on any device. However, all the data in the world is meaningless unless it can be interpreted, understood and used to make decisions that lead to better outcomes for your business – and that’s where expert advice comes in.
Analysing and interpreting asset health data on the fly and then using it to make important (and potentially costly) decisions is a skill that comes with time, training and experience. Imagine somebody with zero experience in stock trading looking at trading results for the first time and quickly deciding where to invest thousands – nobody would recommend doing this, and we don’t either. The same principle applies to asset health data.
At WesTrac, we have a team of expert analysts who have years of experience in remote asset health. Each analyst has a deep understanding of telemetry health data, fluid sample analysis and the latest in machine learning from Caterpillar®. By putting your machine on a FitFleet Customer Value Agreement (CVA), you’ll have access to an expert who will provide you with unique insights into the health of your equipment – it’s this valuable advice that will help you reduce costs, minimise downtime and increase productivity.
The other benefit to having access to WesTrac asset health experts is the time you’ll save. This is because analysing and interpreting asset health data, even using the latest technology, still takes a chunk of time (regardless of how experienced you are). Even if you understand asset health data, you might still choose to rely on one of our experts to do the leg work, so this frees up more of your time to focus on other areas of your business.
Thousands of our customers are seeing success every single day by having their equipment on a FitFleet CVA – an ongoing support and maintenance solution provided by WesTrac, for an individual machine of any brand that encompasses both an agreement and access to an online portal providing data-driven insights into the overall health and utilisation of your machine.
The types of customers seeing success range from large operators with huge fleets to smaller construction operators with one single machine. The beauty of FitFleet is that there are four levels: Essentials, Plus, Premium and Ultimate – one CVA for every type of customer.
Here is a collection of recent customer success stories who benefited from remote asset health and condition monitoring through their FitFleet CVAs.
For one of our mining customers, through electronic telemetry, WesTrac analysts detected an unexpected temperature differential between the left and right exhausts of a large machine. Upon further inspection, it was found that there were cracked exhaust tubes (from turbo to muffler), and these had to be immediately replaced. If this had not been detected early, it would have cost the customer up to $190k in parts and labour for a new engine.
WesTrac analysts detected transmission oil plugged exceptions (via electronic telemetry) together with elevated copper and lead levels from oil samples. It was confirmed that the transmission oil cooler was faulty and needed to be replaced immediately. If this had not been detected early, it would have cost the customer up to $30k in parts and labour for the transmission, and it also would have caused up to 18 hours of asset downtime.
In a Cat 986K Wheel Loader belonging to a customer with a small fleet, WesTrac analysts detected ‘blocked air’ electronic telemetry events and high iron and soot levels in oil samples. Upon this discovery, an email alert was sent to the customer suggesting that they check/replace the air cleaners. The customer immediately did as was suggested and shortly after the filters went back to operating normally and at full performance levels.
To find out more call 1300 881 064, click below to fill out our form, or talk to your local branch or customer service manager.
