Challenges within the manufacturing sector
Type of IIoT solutions
To answer the above challenges, you can invest in an IIoT solution. Within the realm of IIoT, two primary branches emerge: Smart Connected Products and Smart Connected Operations.
By leveraging Smart Connected Products, you can seamlessly connect and optimize end products. This approach not only enhances service delivery but also elevates customer satisfaction. Additionally, it opens doors for potential business model transformations.
Manufacturers can harness the power of Smart Connected Operations to gather extensive data directly from the factory floor. This data serves as a valuable resource for identifying trends and making predictive assessments about future events. Ultimately, it enables process optimization, waste reduction, and product quality enhancement.
Different criteria
However, with a wide range of IIoT solutions available, the question arises: as a manufacturing company, how do you make the right choice among these offerings? For this, you need to consider several factors, such as the specific application of the IIoT solution. Some applications focus on addressing one specific use case, while others offer a broader range of capabilities. It is also important to anticipate future needs and evaluate the scalability of the chosen solution. Toward real-time monitoring, differences are also noticeable.
What is the added value of IIoT?
By
making production process data visible, you can detect and prevent bottlenecks
and causes of machine downtime, among other things. This increases efficiency,
which in turn can lead to more products being made.
When you capture and provide insight into data from your finished products, you can optimize your product and provide better service to your customers. This results in satisfied customers who continue to invest.
By gaining insights into your production process and the various parameters of your machines, you can detect and ultimately prevent machine downtime, energy consumption and quality problems, among other things.
When you are aware of (upcoming) defects in your end product at the customer's site before you leave for a maintenance intervention, you are better prepared and can already take any replacement parts with you. Moreover, you can direct the technician with the right knowledge and experience. This makes for more efficient service, which also reduces costs.
Being able to identify the bottlenecks and machine downtime within your production lines helps to take the necessary follow-up actions to prevent the same problems from reoccurring in the future.
When you can send the field service technician to the customer with the right info and the right replacement parts, your chances of a First-Time-Right maintenance increase, allowing your technicians to be used more efficiently and waste less time.
When you have better insights into the conditions in which your products are made, you can optimize certain parameters and deliver better quality products to your customer.
The quality of your service also improves when you have more insights into your end products.
By
leveraging data to gain insight into your production process, you can enhance
control over production parameters. This capability arises from (near)
real-time visibility into ongoing production activities. For example, you can
mitigate the risk of excessive part heating caused by ambient temperature
fluctuations.
We'd love to help you with your IIoT solution.
Whether you're considering implementing IIoT in your manufacturing or products, are already working with IIoT and need support, or want to talk about how to get even more out of your existing IIoT solution, we're here to help.