Condition monitoring for the heat signals your team cannot afford to miss
A bearing, belt, motor, panel, battery, or dust zone can move toward failure long before a person sees smoke, flame, vibration, or a shutdown alarm. AVIAN gives maintenance and operations teams a continuous thermal view of the places manual rounds cannot watch all day.
Monitor
Watch the critical zone
Detect
Flag abnormal heat
Inspect
Send the team to the right place
Plan
Turn the event into work
24/7
thermal visibility across monitored zones, so condition signals are captured between manual inspections, shift changes, and after-hours operations.
Why condition signals get missed
Manual checks only see the asset at one point in time
Most plants already know which assets deserve attention. The harder problem is timing: heat can appear between inspection rounds, after a load change, during an overnight run, or in a remote area nobody can watch continuously.
Routine rounds can miss short-lived or fast-developing thermal events.
A fixed alarm threshold can miss slow drift on assets that normally run warm.
Visible-light cameras show context, but they do not measure surface temperature.
Maintenance teams need a signal they can turn into inspection, repair, or follow-up work.
What our customers say
Industrial teams use AVIAN to catch heat problems before they become downtime or fire risk
“I can be anywhere in the mill, or even sitting at home”
I can be anywhere in the mill, or even sitting at home and get an alert from AVIAN and I know it’s time to act immediately.
“Condition-Based Thermal Monitoring at Sierra Pacific Mills”
“I’d argue it’s probably one of the best technologies as far as fire safety is concerned”
We had a gearbox that was overheating in our dust shed. Thanks to the alerts from AVIAN, we changed the oil in the gearbox and brought it back under normal operating conditions.
“From Pilot to Prevention: How Chinook Wood Products Uses AVIAN”
“Motors and drives that are operating at their performance limits have been identified”
The 24/7 monitoring, simple installation, continuous further development and the learning process of the system have completely convinced us!
“How AVIAN helped Sawmill Rosenbaum avert catastrophic damage”
Where thermal fits
Add a continuous heat signal to your condition program
AVIAN does not replace every other maintenance signal. It gives your team a reliable view into the failure modes where heat tells the story first.
Surface temperature trends
Monitor zones, assets, and material areas for abnormal heat, sustained drift, or hot spots that deserve inspection.
Thermal plus visual context
Pair temperature evidence with RGB context so operators can identify the belt, bearing, panel, pile, or process area involved.
Event history
Keep a record of what triggered, how temperature changed, who acknowledged it, and what follow-up happened.
From signal to maintenance action
Make abnormal heat part of the daily maintenance loop
Condition monitoring only matters when the signal reaches the team that can act. AVIAN turns thermal events into clear operational handoffs.
Monitor
Watch the critical zone
Thermal cameras monitor the asset, panel, conveyor, battery area, or material zone continuously.
Detect
Flag abnormal heat
The system highlights unusual heat, drift, or high-temperature events that fall outside expected behavior.
Inspect
Send the team to the right place
Operators and maintenance teams see the thermal and visual context needed to verify the condition.
Plan
Turn the event into work
The record supports cleaning, repair, scheduled maintenance, threshold tuning, or safety escalation.
Where it applies
Built around the assets where heat changes the outcome
Sawmills and planer mills
Monitor bearings, rolls, planers, conveyors, and dust systems where heat can become downtime or fire risk.
Recycling and waste
Watch conveyors, piles, battery events, and after-hours zones where manual checks are hard to time.
Food and beverage manufacturing
Track motors, compressors, conveyors, panels, and process equipment without adding another workstation.
Mining conveyors
Monitor remote idlers, drives, transfer points, and long conveyor runs before failures stop production.
Biomass and pellet plants
Track press friction, conveyor heat, drive temperature, and combustible dust zones that need continuous attention.
Grain and feed mills
Monitor elevator legs, bearings, motors, and dust-prone process areas where heat can change quickly.
Proof and resources
Field examples and practical guides
Chinook Wood Products: From Pilot to Sawmill Fire Prevention
During an initial 6month deployment of our monitoring system, the Chinook Wood team has already found substantial benefits in the technology. The pilot kickedoff with 2 cameras monitoring strategic areas in Chinook’s ...
Condition-Based Thermal Monitoring at Sierra Pacific Mills
When Sierra Pacific Industries first reached out to AVIAN, the goal was straightforward: monitor baghouses and dust collection equipment at their Quincy, California operation. What happened next is a story about what ...
Rosenbaum Sawmill: Frame Saw Failure Caught by AVIAN
Friday, May 9 — Once again, the AVIAN earlywarning system at the Josef Rosenbaum sawmill demonstrated the value of predictive monitoring with thermal intelligence. One of our smart camera systems there is focused on t...
FAQ
Questions teams ask before they deploy AVIAN
What is condition monitoring?
Condition monitoring means tracking equipment or process health while it operates so teams can act when the asset starts moving away from normal. AVIAN adds a continuous thermal condition signal for assets where heat is the warning sign.
Is thermal condition monitoring a replacement for vibration monitoring?
No. Vibration, oil analysis, ultrasound, and electrical testing all have a place. Thermal monitoring sees a different signal: friction, electrical resistance, retained material heat, process drift, and surface temperature change.
What assets are good candidates for thermal condition monitoring?
Common examples include bearings, rollers, conveyors, motors, gearboxes, electrical panels, battery and charger areas, dust collection systems, and material handling zones where abnormal heat changes the risk.
How does condition monitoring support maintenance planning?
Thermal alerts help teams inspect earlier, document recurring heat issues, schedule work before failure, and decide when an event is a safety escalation rather than routine maintenance.
Condition-Based Monitoring With Thermal Imaging
A practical guide to using thermal data as an early maintenance and fire-risk signal.
Condition-Based vs Predictive Maintenance
A terminology guide for teams building reliability programs from asset data.
AVIAN Thermal Monitoring System
The fixed thermal camera system behind AVIAN condition monitoring.