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IoT and Industry 4.0 improving industrial distribution.

Find out how RS are using IoT and Industry 4.0 to improve their own industrial distribution process.

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Shipping 44,000 orders a day and maintaining conveyor systems that extend over several kilometres is pretty impressive. Imagine if you had the responsibility of keeping this process running smoothly 24hrs a day, without breakdown, whilst ensuring your planned maintenance schedule remains inconspicuous to the overall productivity of the facility.

Sounds daunting right, well then spare a thought for Neil Burrows the Process Improvement Specialist at RS Components Nuneaton, a facility which covers 65,000sq ft. of warehousing, packaging and conveyor systems.

So just how do you, improve your current system whilst giving greater visibility of production efficiencies, build in effective predictive maintenance models and learn the best time for taking systems offline to perform routine maintenance. This is something which concerns many distribution facilities. Every second of down time counts and is costly not just in monentary terms but also in the reputation of the business. Neil and his team are all about process improvements and maintaining up time, as it turns out, it was a really great time to visit Nuneaton.

When we caught up with Neil he was integrating a new IoT based solution within the Nuneaton facility. Working with a company called Brainboxes, who's products internet enable industrial machines by using existing sensors within the system, it was apparent that this retrofit approach, was to offer a low cost solution and deliver benefits of IoT and Industry 4.0 to the Nuneaton operation.

Not only was this to bring process improvements and greater system visibility, but by using asset management, Neil was soon to discover that there was also the added benefit of cost savings to be considered.

View the video and discover how Neil plans to bring process improvement using IoT and what Industry 4.0 really means to a Process Improvement Engineer.

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