More on Top Quartile Companies

Move to the Top Quartile and realize these benefits.

Move to the Top Quartile and realize these benefits.

The benefits enjoyed by Top Quartile companies were one of the primary subjects addressed at an afternoon press conference held at Emerson Exchange (Oct. 24 to 28, 2016, Austin, TX). In his portion of the conference, Mike Train, exec. vice president of Emerson Automation Services, described Top Quartile companies with these four characteristics:

• Link strategy to business objectives
• Demand a culture of accountability
• Embed expertise in work processes and applications
• Optimize [operations] with real-time data.

One of the most-telling stats is that Top Quartile companies cut their maintenance costs in half while enjoying a 4% increase in availability (uptime).

What’s the price for sub-optimal performance?—$1 trillion in lost company value on an annual basis.

Peter Zornio, chief strategic officer illustrated why companies fail to operate in the Top Quartile with a quote from an operations manager he met: “We’re staffed to run, not staffed to change.”

Behind that quote are three factors that prevent movement to the Top Quartile:

• Outdated practices developed prior to advances in technology
• Risk aversion
• Constrained resources (skills/capital).

He suggested that companies can break free and move toward the Top Quartile by using automation and IIoT technology (Industrial Internet of Things). Those are two tools that most companies fail to exploit. Only 5% of companies have an in-depth IIoT strategy for improving plant equipment reliability and maintenance. ROI is the biggest challenge to IIoT adoption for 57% of companies and 32% cite funding as a significant roadblock. Emerson’s PLANTWEB system/services are designed to help companies overcome these roadblocks and move toward the Top Quartile.