Press ReleasesDevelopment of a System that Constantly Monitors the Temperature and Vibration Acceleration of Equipment with a Wireless Sensor- A low-cost product that readily permits visualization of data -

Nippon Paper Industries Co., Ltd.

Nippon Paper Industries Co., Ltd. (President：Fumio Manoshiro, hereinafter, "the Company") is pleased to announce that Nippon Paper Unitec Co., Ltd. (President：Hitoshi Kemuriyama, hereinafter, "Nippon Paper Unitec"), an engineering operating company of the Nippon Paper Group, has developed the "e-musen junkai (e-wireless patrol)", a system that constantly monitors machines and devices in operation, such as manufacturing equipment, for signs of abnormality using a wireless sensor. Nippon Paper Unitec provides maintenance services for many pieces of equipment and has uniquely developed this system in response to demand in manufacturing sites for an affordable system that makes monitoring of a large number of machines and devices simple.

Conventionally, signs of equipment abnormality were detected mainly through human patrols on site. This method depends greatly on the experience and intuition of patrollers, or on techniques and skills that cannot be quantified. The e-musen junkai system accumulates data on temperature and vibration acceleration of machines and devices in operation, permitting trend monitoring based on numerical data. This enables equipment problems to be prevented by dealing appropriately with equipment showing abnormal trends, thereby helping to stabilize operations.

This system consists of a child device with a sensor, which is to be mounted on a machine or a device such as a motor; a parent device that accumulates data obtained by the child device; and software that manages data in the parent device. To allow the system to be mounted on a large number of machines and devices, Nippon Paper Unitec has limited its functions, giving it a low-cost design. In addition, it is a wireless, battery-powered system, which can be mounted easily without installation work. The system also features excellent expandability, allowing up to 500 child devices to be connected to one parent device. There are also two sensors for the child device comes to choose from - a magnet type and a screw type - for easy setup.

In 2015, the Company started e-musen junkai system at the Hokkaido Mill (Shiraoi), and began to build data accumulation and IoT foundations for manufacturing sites. In the future, we will proceed with the introduction of all Mills in Japan, promote IoT, and proactively expand external sales.

The e-musen junkai system will be exhibited at the 41st Plant Maintenance Show that will be held at Tokyo Big Sight during July 19 to 21. The exhibitor is Sakurai Co., Ltd. (President：Norio Yabe), the distributor of the system that belongs to the Nippon Paper Group. The company will demonstrate the system at its booth by mounting it on an actual motor. We invite you to visit the exhibition and examine the performance and convenience of the system in person.