The Disconnected Reality

 

Lots of manufacturing plants in the U.S. are more than 20 years old. Significantly less than 14 percent of the machines on shop floors are “connected.” This means they do not have sensors or monitoring that can extract data about how they are operating. These older machines are likely to get breaking down, and they account for up to $50 billion (annually) in downtime.

 

Hype over Industrial IoT has many manufacturers believing that they must quickly invest in transformational technologies like machine learning, augmented reality, or artificial intelligence to acquire any benefits around efficiency. But that’s far from the reality. While manufacturers need to initiate building the connected foundation to extract and leverage data, it does not need a big overhaul overnight. By leveraging a cloud-based platform, many manufacturers are starting by focusing on Industrial IoT business drivers and then building on initial successes.

 

The Problem with Data in Manufacturing

 

A significant problem toward becoming more connected is getting at data in older machines on the shop floor. A great number of these machines do not have digital controllers or they necessitate external retrofitting and sensors to pull operational data. This can frequently be difficult and expensive so a clear return must be identified to undertake the effort. For this reason, companies focus on the most critical equipment that may have been problematic in the past or represents a critical control point that affects delivery.

 

The next problem is even when data is available, there is hardship around what to do with it. Raw data is not of much value unless there is a way to interpret it and make sense of it. Most manufacturers don’t have data scientists on hand to help with this endeavor. The hype around big data is that manufacturers who have ability to access data will transform how business is done, but the reality is digitization just lays the foundation for understanding what is going on in any particular asset. There has to be a way to visualize the data to make it workable.

 

What’s the Industrial IoT Reality Today?

 

Rediscovering the chief mission of manufacturing — making high-quality products as cost-effectively as possible — the reality with Industrial IoT is more about leveraging capital they already have than it is about the promise of some far-off future. It is about unveiling ideas and opportunities for improvement.

 

Lots of manufacturers are basically gaining visibility into their existing assets. They are looking at how to improve operational effectiveness by knowing what is happening on the shop floor. They are monitoring historical trendlines to learn, diagnose, and improve uptime and performance. They are pinpointing trends that could disrupt operations or quality performance.

 

Leading manufacturers today know that Industrial IoT is a strategy they can not ignore — because there is a good chance that those manufacturers who do ignore it will be like many consumer companies that missed out on the Internet. They know that it’s important to start putting in the connected foundation that will leverage Industrial IoT now rather than wait.

 

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