Many manufacturers are not enjoying the full benefits of digitalisation, partly because of the difficulty obtaining real-time data from their plants and machines.
In June’s edition of Drives and Controls Magazine, our Technical Director – Jan Hemper, argues that such barriers can be overcome by closer cooperation between System Integrators and suppliers.
“My biggest challenge is connectivity,” said a manufacturing solutions architect who works for a household name in the food and beverage sector. This sentiment is echoed by many manufacturers, who are desperate to enjoy the benefits of the latest software tools for improving productivity, maintenance and their processes.
In short, the managers want the attractions that these tools offer, but connected to the real-time sensor data from their machines and processes. For example, there are plenty of companies that sell maintenance planning software that runs on smart tablets, but still relies on manual data input, rather than obtaining real plant data directly from the sensors on the machines.
The 2017 UK Made Smarter Review listed 31 obstacles to adopting industrial digitalisation. At positions 3 and 6 were “lack of certainty to the solution working” and “legacy infrastructure”. At number 2 was “lack of skills to design new systems and implement”.
To read the full article and the rest of the online magazine of Drives and Controls, click the link to the right.
