IIoT Big Topic at EASA 2019 Convention

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has become a buzzword among industry professionals, so it’s no surprise that it was a key topic at the 2019 Electrical Apparatus Service Association (EASA) Convention in Las Vegas.

According to Pumps & Systems magazine, more than 3,000 industry members were in attendance for this year’s convention, and many companies from the motor industry conducted business from their booths on the show floor. As a solutions provider for the fluid sealing industry, SEPCO stood out.

In the article by Pumps & Systems Managing Editor Drew Champlin, SEPCO’s regional business manager Chris Tindell, CMRP, discussed how the motor industry traditionally has not been aware that are alternatives to horizontal labyrinth technology. This is where SEPCO can help.

“We have expeller seals that are used in motor applications […],” Tindell told Pumps and Systems. “We’ve done a lot of work with motor shops and had customers pointing us toward the motor shops, realizing there’s not only benefits to pump and steam turbines, but also to the electric motors.”

Additionally, EASA’s Gene Vogel, pump and vibration specialist, hosted a presentation on the IIoT, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.

“We don’t know what [the next step] is, but it’s coming, and we better be ready for it,” Vogel told Champlin. “I think people have accepted the internet — not because of anything in our industry, but because of its ubiquitous impact on society at large. You can’t escape it and be alive in this world.”

Vogel also discussed how long industry members should be prepared to wait before AI and machine learning mature to the point that it is possible to predict machine conditioning without a technician needing to inspect it.

“My comment was that I thought it would take a decade,” Vogel said in the article. “It’s here to stay. People are not averse to it. They think it’s going to go much faster than I think it’s going to go. People assume technology can solve all problems. It can’t. We can with technology. Technology is a tool to solve the problem […]”

Listen to Vogel’s discussion of IIoT in this podcast from Pumps & Systems.

The 2020 EASA convention will take place June 14-16 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. For more information on the role IIoT played at EASA 2019, check out the full article.