Convincing Upper Management
It’s Time for Machine Monitoring Software
In most manufacturing facilities today convincing management that the company should invest in machine monitoring isn’t an issue. However, if you find yourself in such an environment there are many convincing reasons for management to adopt Industry 4.0 technology such as machine monitoring.
Visibility to be able to see how much time a machine is spent running with the feed rate override turned down is a very powerful reason by itself. Having real-time access to this type of data allows for potential problems to be addressed before they become real issues. Many times, this identifies machine problems, or needed training.
From the maintenance side, the ability to schedule preventative maintenance tasks based on actual cycle hours rather than simply based on time pays for itself very quickly. Without visibility into the actual machine activity machines are either over maintained, or under maintained. Over maintaining consumes personnel resources and incurs planned downtime, while under-maintaining leads to unplanned machine issues which are even more expensive.
Having visibility into all of the alarms that occur, when they occur, and how long each alarm stays active is another great identifier for potential machine problems or needed training. In addition to historical visibility, real time dashboards along with email and text notifications when specific alarms happen help identifying scenarios that need immediate attention.
Then there’s always the argument about initial cost or data being stuck in the Cloud. With Scytec’s interchangeable options of month-to-month, annual, or bi-annual billing along with on-premise deployments there aren’t any issues with having to pay large up front fees to get started, or the feeling that your stuck in the Cloud if you prefer, or require local storage of the data.
Machine monitoring and managing by data is no longer something that provides a competitive advantage, it’s something that is required to compete.