MEDICAL GAS SYSTEMS Work on ‘trending’
The Service manager explained that Professor Luo is currently looking at ‘trending’; thus if a particular component keeps breaking down, SHJ will be able to report its entire service history to the customer. He said: “Via K’nect and our AI technology we can provide the service engineer with a comprehensive on-site picture of aspects such as all the servicing work undertaken on the item or component; we can provide this detailed overview for all the medical gas plant connected to K’nect via our plant controllers and monitoring/alarm systems. It’s a powerful tool fault- finding-wise, because knowing the full diagnostics history not only reduces the time it takes to rectify faults, but should also increase the number of ‘first fix’ visits.”
James Forgan explained that all SHJ’s engineers have a fully stocked van holding a full range of spares. He added: “These parts are not just for our own equipment; we look after the full range of medical gas systems from all the leading manufacturers. Alongside the stock in the vehicles, we have a substantial spare parts inventory here.” “In fact,” added Stafford Scopes, “we hold half a million pounds’ worth of stock here at head office, plus about a further £10,000 worth per vehicle.”
James Forgan said one of his key goals on joining SHJ was to make the company’s service offering even better. He said: “We already have a skilled, organised, and well-structured service team, but I am looking to expand it and to continue to upskill the team members. We have a great training and demonstration facility here, with demonstration air plant, and medical gas outlets.” I asked what level of skills service engineers recruited to SHJ would need. James Forgan replied: “Everyone needs a CP, but typically you are looking at people qualified to HND level; perhaps City & Guilds for electromechanical backgrounds.”
Stafford Scopes added: “We pride ourselves on doing quite a lot of our training ‘in house’. Shaukat Ali, our Installation & Commissioning manager, is very knowledgeable on the many different types of alarm system, and runs training courses accordingly. We also send staff away for training. Shaukat has one current job where his team is installing 22 different alarm panels, and has taken both some of our experienced engineers and newer recruits with him to test and commission.”
Useful familarisation
James Forgan added: “That is a great way to get to understand how an alarm system works. If you understand the installation and commissioning, then if
22 Health Estate Journal April 2020
A variety of call-outs, the status of each, and average response time, shown via the K’nect portal.
you need to go back to basics when fault- finding, you have the appropriate knowledge. Some of the alarm systems can be complex, and you may be dealing with hundreds, if not thousands, of metres of cabling across a large acute hospital.” In addition to having a well-trained and capable workforce, SHJ is especially proud of its harnessing of 21st century communications technology to help customers get the best out of their medical gas systems. Stafford Scopes explained: “For example, Professor Luo is able to use AI and edge computing to ‘talk’ to the compressors in our medical gas systems in such a way that – for instance – he can gauge the temperature at which different parts are running, and the speed the motors are turning at, remotely. We have worked closely with HPC to exchange such data, which is provided via the Empower controller, which controls the air in the vacuum plant. Evolution is the complementary alarm and remote monitoring system. The newer Emanate is a more ‘intelligent’ version of Evolution; for instance, it will trend the compressor’s temperature, and in future will be able to undertake vibration analysis, and listen to the acoustics in the plant room. Because we will know what the ‘normal’ running sound of the system is, Gaoyong will then, for instance, be
able to tell whether a belt is beginning to wear.”
Refining both new and old Professor Luo explained: “We are constantly evolving Emanate’s capabilities, while simultaneously refining the Empower and Evolution systems. For instance, we previously used a PLC controller in Empower. While reliable, we believed we could improve its communication power to obtain data from the system’s ‘far side’, allowing even more effective remote control and monitoring. We therefore replaced the PLCs with ARM processors – which offer considerably better processing power, and the ability to use AI, 5G, edge computing, and the IOT communication network – to link up the various components. A 5G module can thus be used much more effectively to send a signal from the ‘far side’ of the medical gas system to our server, allowing us to collect all the data we need.” The Professor continued: “Our new Emanate ‘intelligent’ plant monitoring and analysis system is based around edge computing, distributed ‘cloud’, and blockchain technology, to gather all the information, and record, analyse, and trend it. This helps us determine our future control strategy, and, based on the
A view of the main dashboard on the K’nect portal.
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