2018 Digital Adoption Trends and What’s Next in 2019

The big takeaway for many manufacturers has been the accessibility of equipment on the plant floor due to low-capital, industrial networking solutions (Source: Sponsored by Siemens USA).

Tis’ the time of year to take stock in one’s personal life and, of course, for your operations and maintenance (O&M) team’s success in meeting this year’s key performance indicators or goals. For 2019, all signs keep pointing to more digital adoption via predictive and proactive maintenance pilot projects to move toward “exception-based” reporting and optimize workforce routines.

However, there are conflicting signs on how successful digital initiatives are doing in manufacturing. A recent white paper, titled, “Growth Engine: Scaling Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies in Production” details how to begin scaling IIoT projects but that “more than 70% of industrial companies are still either at the start of the journey or unable to go beyond the pilot stage.”

One of the reasons for the slow journey into digital investment can be disparate platforms or equipment in many factories for a manufacturer. Jim Wetzel, former director of Global Reliability at General Mills and interim CEO of the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute, pointed out in our discussion this fall, many companies need a common platform to implement predictive technology in a relatively quick fashion.

“From a national standpoint, if you’re lucky enough to have the same platform across the globe then you can standardize on the platform and make sure that all the right information for that platform is done no matter where in the world you make it,” says Wetzel. 

According to Wetzel, “At General Mills, we could do that with cereal and other products like granola bars that were made in different parts of the world.  Then you could create a standard and a set of information and data and sensors that must be there for that platform.”

A Digital Invasion via CMMS

Digital transformations come in many different sizes and shapes. A recent webinar from Dude Solutions talks about the slow, but successful change at Admiral Beverage with a new computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) for the company. The company employed Facility Dude and the discussion centers on the implementation of this new maintenance system, including tracking  equipment and how this presented new maintenance scenarios.

During the webinar’s Q&A session, Terry Pyer, maintenance mgr at Admiral Beverage, said: “The new CMMS helped me change the compressors to an hour tracking. We’ve got our largest compressors on almost a ten month PM plan because it’s primary compressor all the time, but our smallest compressor doesn’t cycle that often. It’s a three year, based on hours, so successfully they helped me convert them to an hour tracking, hour logging to a needed PM.”

Webinar | Admiral’s digital transformation, watch “Maintenance Best Practices for Food and Beverage.”