The plant floor has always been advanced in the application of technology to optimize operations. You can walk into a 30 year old processing plant and still be amazed at the symphony taking place that brings parts or ingredients together to make and package an end product. Most plants continually look for new ways to apply technologies to improve their production, quality, reduce cost, etc. While asset maintenance is critical and important, it has historically been treated as the necessary evil, and maintenance organizations are still struggling to move from reactive to preventive or predictive maintenance. They have been left to maintain assets that are growing in complexity without the real benefits of advanced technology.
However, we have witnessed a change in maintenance organizations world wide with the promise of Digital Transformation. The threat of “innovate or be left behind by your competitors” looms large over their heads. They are seeing technology that improves more than just the delivery of their information – they see technology that provides truly actionable, robust data that can impact the way they maintain their assets. They are seeing the value of the assets coming to life via augmented reality or dark data residing in their machines coming to light as powerful analytics churn through information to provide a prescriptive approach.
Digital Transformation - Where Do I Start?
This technology is becoming available en masse and provides multiple platforms or approaches to fulfill anyone's IoT vision. Unfortunately, we have found that the technology smorgasboard creates a new issue for the maintenance organizations as they left asking “where do I even start?” They are overwhelmed by what can be done as opposed to focusing in on what should be done. The payoffs appear huge, but so do the projects and they are already understaffed and trying to manage work back logs.
Senior maintenance managers are seeing the increasing need to have the information that is in the plant’s SCADA, MES, Quality systems, etc. There has always been a desire for maintenance to get that plant floor information into their Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system, but technology made it difficult, cumbersome and unyielding….Until now.
IoT Strategy - “Think Big, Start Small, Act Fast”
Thingworx provides the platform needed to support our IoT strategy of “Think Big, Start Small, Act Fast.” It is the entry point for all the promises that IoT can provide a maintenance organization. By connecting maintenance to information and sensors that are already available – dormant data, an organization can find “operational gold” that can result in immediate, real returns on their investment.
Aquitas Solutions is excited to bring our Connected Maintenance solution, leveraging the ThingWorx technology, to LiveWorx as an Elite Sponsor. Stop by Booth #1120 near the IoT & Manufacturing zones in the Xtropolis expo hall to see live demos, meet our team, and see how Connected Maintenance can transform your organization.
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