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Reduce maintenance and increase up time, this is a problem faced by many in today’s competitive industrial markets.
Streamlining efficiencies and improving visibility of system performance is the most effective way to remain competitive. In industry this is synonymous with the move towards IoT and Industry 4.0, where these much valued attributes can be easily got at.
But just how do you go about improving an existing system and bring it into the world of IoT.
As many Facility Managers will tell you, existing plants have infrastructure which simply can’t be decommissioned, or turned off whilst a new and extensive solution is protect managed. The plant still needs to run.
In most cases (out with a complete new facility) it’s the existing infrastructure that has to be modified and modified quickly. The new upgrades must incorporate what is already there such as, sensors, field devices, motors and whatever else is driving the system.
Smart manufacturing is all about optimising the assets. To put this simply, it’s basically transferring the data from the factory floor through to the enterprise level and delivering clear tangible insight to how well your plant is performing, usually this is visualised through some form of dashboard reporting.
Knowing how and where to upgrade is the key. This was the problem presented to Dave Sutton and Neil Preston of Schneider Electric when the visited RS Nuneaton as part the RS Smart Asset Management project.
Let’s see how they got on.