Monitoring optical communications products with Testo

 

The world’s largest supplier of optical communication products, Finisar, has been operating for three decades, leading the way in optics technology. It employs 17,000 staff all around the world in countries like the US, China and Australia.

To learn more about the ins and outs of the industry and how Testo Saveris 1 is helping monitor standards, we caught up with Simon Jowett, a facility manager in Australia.

The Challenge

Simon explained that monitoring room temperature and humidity conditions of the facilities they manage, as well as the storage cabinets which house the optics technology, are both particularly sensitive to humidity.

The quality management regulation requires facility managers to keep the temperature at 21 degrees Celsius, though it’s the humidity which is much more critical to the functionality of the network. Humidity must be maintained to a minimum of 40 per cent RH inside the rooms to minimise the electrostatic discharged (ESD) in the rooms.

Next, the dry storage cabinets must be maintained at less than 10 degrees Celsius, according to the electronics industry-wide standard, JDEC. Incorrect temperatures could result in an interruption of the network.

Recording every 15 minutes, 24 hours and seven days a week, all measurements must be perfect as the longer they go without being in the correct setting the more damage to the technology.

Here’s how Testo Saveris 1 can alert you to a problem in your system before it becomes a bigger issue.

 

The solution

To measure the room temperature and humidity, Simon uses a building management system (BMS) to ensure everything is in order. The Testo Saveris 1 works to make sure the control system is doing what it says it’s doing, acting as the canary in the coal mine, of sorts.

Simon ran into a situation recently where Testo was able to alert him to a problem in one of the dry storage units that was reading a high humidity temperature. The Testo sensors sent out an alert that promoted Simon to go and review the cabinet in question. On the surface, Simon found that everything seemed to be running normally.

However, he then realised that the cabinet’s control system had locked up and was displaying the wrong measurement. Testo was able to pick up on this malfunction and flag a problem that Simon would never have been able to identify until something had gone wrong with the product itself.

Testo Saveris 1 – The advantages 

For Finisar, it’s important to act fast when a measurement isn’t reading right, and Testo’s tools are able to proactively prevent issues from becoming bigger issues. To learn more about how Testo can help improve the efficiency of your job, contact our team today.