The demand for sensors

Market forecasters BCC Research have predicted that sensor sales will top £50 billion in 2014, reaching £74.1 billion by 2019, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.9%.  BCC attributes this record demand to issues such as increases in productivity and government regulations, while some sources have put it all down to improved fabrication techniques that have enhanced the components themselves. Another theory is that increased sensing abilities at lower cost have increased market growth.

All of these claims may be true but when it comes to vibration sensing they miss the most powerful argument of all: profitability. Even without the drivers suggested above, an increasing number of businesses are recognising that protecting plant with sensors also protects profitability by preventing downtime.  In the past, many engineers genuinely believed that it was cheaper to continue running worn equipment rather than invest in replacements.  However, when expensive downtime costs and catastrophic failure hit the plant this theory of ‘efficiency’ is often proved dramatically wrong.  This is why vibration monitoring has swept across industry: machines that have begun to exhibit defects are at greater risk of failure than those without defects, and are therefore more likely to generate unwelcome downtime costs; a vibration monitoring system enables engineers to plan maintenance and replace defective components before problems occur.