From Signals to Strategy: How ESA and AI Are Empowering the Future of Maintenance
Interview with Marco Ferreira, CEO & Co-founder of Enging – Make Solutions
As industry leaders push toward digital transformation, the challenge remains: how can we make data truly useful for maintenance teams on the ground?
For Marco Ferreira, the answer lies in a combination of smart technology and human expertise. As CEO and co-founder of Enging, Ferreira has spent years developing and refining Electrical Signature Analysis (ESA) — an innovative, non-intrusive technique that uses voltage and current signals to detect developing faults in electrical assets.
“ESA allows us to monitor the health of machines in real time, without shutting them down or adding external sensors,” Ferreira explains. “But what’s even more exciting is that it enables early fault detection — often before traditional techniques pick up anything.”
What sets Enging apart is its pioneering application of ESA to static assets like transformers, a domain where most condition monitoring still relies on offline measurements or lab analysis. “We’re the first company applying online ESA to transformers, and this opens up a whole new realm of predictive maintenance,” Ferreira says. “Transformers are critical, expensive assets, and when they fail, the consequences are huge. With our technology, companies can act before failures happen.”
But technology alone is not the goal.
“Our philosophy is human-centric,” Ferreira emphasizes. “Predictive maintenance should support people, not replace them. AI can process data and detect patterns at speed, but the real value comes when it helps people make better, faster decisions.”
That’s why the Enging platform prioritizes intuitive dashboards, clear alerts, and actionable insights. Case studies across sectors like water utilities, cement, petrochemicals, and energy show measurable improvements: less unplanned downtime, faster fault response, and better energy efficiency.
Power quality issues — such as harmonic distortion and voltage imbalance — are another focus area. “These are hidden killers,” says Ferreira. “They accelerate asset degradation and waste energy, but many companies aren’t even measuring them.” By embedding power quality monitoring into their ESA solution, Enging helps clients not only detect faults, but also quantify energy losses and related CO₂ emissions, giving maintenance professionals powerful arguments for action — even with finance or sustainability teams.
Ferreira is also working with clients to calculate ROI on corrective actions based on ESA findings. “We’re collaborating with a water utility in Portugal, for example, to benchmark pump inefficiencies, propose interventions, and measure energy savings. That’s where digital maintenance becomes a strategic lever.”
While the technology continues to evolve, Ferreira remains focused on the human side. “We ask people to bring their challenges, their machines, their pain points. We don’t want to just show slides. We want to build solutions together.”
That’s the spirit he brings to Asset Performance 2025 — not only as a speaker, but as a workshop host.
Want to learn more? Presentation: Empowering People through Model-Based Predictive Maintenance supported by AI: A Human-Centric Approach to Asset Reliability
November 5, 14:35 – 15:10 |
Room Gorilla 1 | Track: Digital Transformation in Maintenance & Asset Management with Jorge Estima, VP Products
Workshop: Electrical Signature Analysis on Transformers, Motors, Generators and Power Electronics
November 4, 16:15 – 17:45
Bring your laptop to access the ESA demo platform and explore real-world use cases with Enging’s Team.