One of the key ways to improve operational performance is to reduce unplanned downtime. An ARC Advisory Group blog post, Technology Trends to Watch for in 2017, noted:
At the recent ARC Industry Forum, ARC’s Harry Forbes interviewed Emerson’s Phil Niccolls in this 8:10 YouTube video about the challenges manufacturers face in planning and justifying the use of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in improving operational performance.One of the biggest end user challenges remains unscheduled downtime. IIoT-enabled solutions, such as remote monitoring and predictive maintenance, can help minimize, if not totally eliminate this, which would deliver a rapid ROI.
Phil opens noting three concern areas he often hears. The first is around needing help in assessing the technology available and the financial justification to go forward. The second area is security. As additional wireless measurement and access for remote experts to analyze and recommend, the need for a highly-secure infrastructure is required. The third area is to develop the project roadmap going forward—what should be done and in what order. This also includes determining the measures of success.
He explains that over $1 trillion dollars is lost by global manufacturers and producers due to suboptimal performance. Phil described how Emerson has taken a programmatic approach called Operational Certainty to help manufacturers achieve Top Quartile performance in their respective industry segment.
This approach consists of Plantweb digital ecosystem technology built on years of digital communications and wireless device and infrastructure experience. This experience helps to create the Secure First Mile to get data out securely to the analytics software and experts required to act up the information provided by these Pervasive Sensing devices around the manufacturing facility.
As an example, Phil cites PeakVue diagnostics which help predict when equipment failures will occur. For more on how this analytics-based diagnostic works, visit the post, Avoiding Bearing Failures with the Rule of Tens PeakVue Measurement Methodology.
Watch the video for more as Phil describes how these analytics are available at many levels and for many roles including locally on smart phones and tablets to remotely to remote experts via Connected Services.
You can also connect and interact with other IIoT and operational improvement experts in the Wireless and Improve & Modernize groups in the Emerson Exchange 365 community.