Remote Monitoring Plays a Key Role in Reducing Downtime
Manufacturing plants are facing common challenges nowadays. The first of them is an aging workforce. The second – smooth transfer of knowledge. Increased demands for higher quality products utilizing fewer resources follows. Finally, the most recent challenge, pandemic.
Navigating these issues is critical to maintaining ongoing operations and controlling costs. If something additional happens, such as unplanned equipment downtime, the results can be a logistical nightmare and financial disaster. But it’s certainly not all doom-and-gloom. The adoption of innovative technology is playing a critical role in mitigating unexpected problems and staffing challenges, writes Reliable Plant.
Downtime is a serious threat to any manufacturing plant. One of the most dreaded scenarios within a manufacturing plant is that if one area backs up, it can have a snowball effect on other areas waiting for completion of prior processes to deliver parts to them. The old saying “time is money” is very true in these manufacturing plant situations. The longer amount of time it takes to complete processes and finish products, the more money it costs to get those products out the door, writes Jason Sluyter. The innovative technology reduces the amount of time that people or machines are idle.
The leading cause of unscheduled downtime within facilities seems to be aging equipment , operator error and lack of time needed to perform necessary maintenance.
Even though almost all processes in a manufacturing sector are affected by the shortage of trained personnel, machine maintenance may be the most troublesome. Maintenance technicians are in high demand for manufacturing plants, and manufacturers tend to shift at least some maintenance responsibilities to operating personnel. That is a potentially dangerous move, as equipment is becoming increasingly automated and complex.
The answer here could be a remote monitoring.
Connected operations are adding greater complexity to industrial environments. Production systems are converging with information systems, and production downtime now goes hand in hand with network downtime. There’s a significant opportunity to use data available from connected operations to help reduce or prevent downtime, but that opportunity only can be realized with the right resources and expertise in place. To keep operations up, more companies are turning to remote monitoring and support services, writes Plant Engineering.
One strategy is to invest in technology for areas with worker shortages, such as sensors that monitor whether a machine is working properly instead of having someone possibly crawl under equipment to check out a problem. Another way is using remote alarm notification software, which allows fewer people to monitor many more assets using devices that people already have, such as smartphones and tablets. Uninterrupted remote availability is essential to ensuring systems can be continuously monitored, even without staff onsite or with fewer people working at the facility.
