Industrial and facility assets rarely fail all at once. Asset degradation usually unfolds quietly: lubrication quality declines, energy consumption drifts upward, or mechanical stress accumulates across rotating equipment. Without continuous performance analysis, early warning signs remain buried in operational data until a fault escalates into costly downtime.
For organizations managing thousands of distributed assets, traditional alarm-based monitoring alone cannot provide sufficient protection. This challenge becomes especially acute in remote monitoring environments, where early signs of failure must be identified before alarms ever trigger.
FLSmidth, a global engineering company serving the mining and cement industries, encountered this reality while operating multiple Monitoring Control Centers responsible for customer assets worldwide.
Detecting faults before downtime occurs
FLSmidth required a centralized monitoring solution capable of supporting early fault detection across a global asset base while aligning with a Microsoft-based technology environment and long-term sustainability goals. Specifically, the solution needed to:
- Identify developing equipment issues before failures escalated
- Issue automated alerts to Monitoring Control Centers
- Prioritize items to work on with Cost Estimates
- Scale reliably across hundreds of geographically distributed plants
Using GENESIS from Mitsubishi Electric Iconics Digital Solutions—an automation and digitalization platform with native Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) capabilities—FLSmidth established a remote monitoring architecture that continuously evaluates asset health globally. Operational and historical data, alarms, analytics, and reporting operate within a unified environment, enabling earlier visibility into abnormal behavior and performance drift.
One incident demonstrates the impact. Through dashboard-based monitoring, engineers detected an oil leak developing in a customer’s crusher. Early identification prevented major asset damage, avoided unplanned downtime, and protected production schedules. Without early fault detection, the same issue could have escalated into extended outage and costly repairs.
Operational impact at scale
FLSmidth achieved measurable operational gains across its remote monitoring operations. Centralized monitoring supports:
- Faster response to asset alerts across customer operations
- Improved uptime and extended equipment life
- Reduced reliance on on-site intervention
- Progress toward sustainability goals through lower energy use and reduced carbon footprint
Scalability remains a critical advantage as the company plans to expand monitoring coverage from approximately 230 plants to nearly 400 facilities, encompassing close to 10,000 assets. GENESIS architecture supports this growth while maintaining reliability, configurability, and consistent operational performance across global environments.
FDD: From monitoring to diagnostic insight
FDD allows for continuous analysis of live and historical data for early identification of abnormal behavior, while diagnostic logic helps engineers distinguish between mechanical issues, process inefficiencies, and emerging failure modes.
As a result, operational teams move beyond reactive response toward proactive intervention, protecting both critical assets and customer trust.
Learn more about fault detection and diagnostics in practice
Explore how FDD supports early intervention, operational resilience, and scalable asset protection. Download the Fault Detection and Diagnostics eBook.
The eBook explains:
- Why alarms alone fail to catch early-stage faults
- How FDD identifies developing issues sooner
- What successful FDD implementations require
- How platforms such as GENESIS support FDD at enterprise scale
For asset-intensive operations, early insight often makes the difference between routine maintenance and costly downtime.