Published on 12/15/2016 | Use Cases
John, the COO of a leading manufacturing company has been facing increasing costs of operations for some of his production units. The fierce competition from new low-cost market entrants is forcing John to quickly take necessary steps to improve operational performance. However, the lack of visibility into plant operations, disparate legacy systems spread across multiple geographies, traditional manual processes are creating barriers to operational excellence.
These challenges are not unique to John’s business alone. The asset-intensive industries like Manufacturing, Heavy Equipment, Construction, and Telecom often face these challenges which impact their overall profitability. The dawn of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is bringing in revolutionary changes enabling enterprises to manage their assets more efficiently and effectively. According to McKinsey , the IoT market is expected to reach USD 11 Trillion by 2025, most of which is contributed by insights generated by connected devices in the materials-reliant sector.
Smart asset management system enables businesses to unleash the power of connected devices and data-driven decision making providing real-time visibility and actionable insights.
At the heart of Smart Asset Management lie the IoT-enabled intelligent assets which can sense, store and share critical information. The interconnected network of intelligent machines leads to vital operational insights and untold business value. The cost-effective connected devices and sensors can be embedded into virtually anything, providing business-critical data about products, vehicles, and other assets. A multi-national conglomerate drastically improved operational performance by measuring machine operating data (temperature, pressure, humidity etc.) in real-time using more than 10,000 sensors.
As machines become more intelligent, businesses are achieving next level of process automation. Traditional siloed manual operations are getting more streamlined and orchestrated. With Industrie 4.0 revolution reshaping business processes, automation solutions for enterprise asset management are getting increasingly adopted for better control of just-in-time processes, zero-defect delivery and enhanced productivity. At a leading electronics manufacturing plant, around 1000 automation controllers manage 75% of the supply chain reducing system downtime and time-to-market.
With ‘smart asset management’, businesses can track their assets throughout the supply chain. Be it a fleet of trucks, energy grids or industrial machinery, IoT provides a digital identity to all enterprise assets. This identity can be easily tracked to provide information on the location, status and condition of assets in real-time. Remote asset monitoring enables tracking of capital assets, processes, resources and products and provides full visibility which in turn optimizes supply and demand. A US-based motorcycle manufacturer successfully rebuilt its production facility by connecting every asset on the plant floor and tracking every production step in real-time.
Smart asset management solutions leverage advanced analytics to foresee business disruptions. It creates a proactive and self-healing environment wherein organizations can anticipate business needs, prevent machine failures and avoid unscheduled interruptions. According to a recent study from ABI Research, maintenance analytics capabilities powered by predictive analytics and M2M connectivity are expected to generate revenue of $24.7 billion by 2019. For example, a leading telecom manufacturer built a virtual manufacturing system to gather real-time information from production machines and enabled predictive quality capabilities.
With ‘smart asset management’ enterprises can embrace a new way forward to a highly-connected and knowledge-enabled world, enhancing customer satisfaction, reducing total cost of ownership, and optimizing business performance.
Now, let’s re-imagine John as the COO of a smart connected manufacturing company, where machines communicate with each other, plant supervisors get real-time alerts on system downtime, and John sitting thousand miles away has complete unit-level visibility into his plants’ operations across the globe. With valuable business insights at his fingertips, John is now able to take the right decision at the right time resulting in improved profitability and business performance.
So, is your enterprise smartly managed?
This article was originally published at RapidValue Solutions Blog and posted on LinkedIn.
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