Integrating Industrial Network of Things (Inot), Fog and Cloud Computing into Condition Monitoring System (CMS) For Azimuth Thrusters

Abstract

This paper focuses on integrating INoT, fog and cloud computing with equipment condition monitoring systems. The integration will help improve the current manual and time consuming system of carrying out azimuth thruster monitoring and maintenance. Equipment's monitoring is very important aspect if industries are to reduce down times and increase revenue especially in the oil and gas sector considering the low price of a barrel in recent times. The present method of equipment monitoring is not efficient and is prone to mistakes and data loss, at present the engineering department uses a USB drive to extract data from each thruster and send the data off to shore using a corporate PC. The entire six thrusters has to be interconnected into a closed network so that the industrial network of things (INoT) or industrial internet of things (IIoT) as industry experts call it are in one physical network, which is the first and data farm layer of the new redesigned system. The data gathered by the fog computing node is also sent off to thruster specialist onshore for further analysis and top management attention and decision making, this layer is the third in the multi-architecture and it's the Cloud. With the convergence of the three distinct networks and computing techniques information technology (IT) will bridge the gap between operations technology (OT) and decision maker to make hidden information more visible to those after fog layer (Engineer's) and at the cloud (Onshore). Operation technology has always being in use from time but those far away from the edge of the network just don't have a better technology and enough visibility until information technology is integrated into the operation technology. IT has made offshore OT visible to those onshore.