How do you prepare for the IIoT revolution?

You can prepare for Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The technology and processes already are available to you. In fact, adopting monitoring and data analysis can directly benefit your operation’s reliability and efficiency.

What IIoT is and how it’s used remains something of a mystery. You can be sure that it will evolve with the successes and failures of early adopters. Timing your own adoption must depend on your production needs and employee capabilities.

IIoT is not the consumer Internet of Things (IoT). If your smart watch fails, or you can’t check in on your refrigerator while on vacation, life continues. You may find it inconvenient or suffer tech anxiety, but you can continue enjoying your run or your family trip. IIoT, however, easily can become a core tool in your maintenance and production activities. A real risk exists that IIoT failures can lead to production disruption, quality problems, employee injury, and death. Understanding that, IIoT offers some terrific opportunities. Odds are it will be expected of many suppliers in the near future.IIoT promises to:

• Improve maintenance and repair scheduling for greater plant reliability.
• Support production collaboration and management across supply chains.
• Support decision makers with current and accurate information about machine and production status.
• Autonomously adjust equipment to optimize reliability and efficiency.

With opportunity, however, comes risks you must manage:

• Network security is critical to prevent malicious disruption and loss of competitive information.
• Successful implementation depends on a high level of reliability and stability in current manufacturing operations.
• A tremendous amount of skill is required to maintain the integrity of both the information network and the production process.
• System errors can lead to employee injuries.

Here are a few things you need to understand to wade your way through the language of consultants:

1. Big data is just more of it than usual. If you want to manage large amounts of data, you should first learn to manage and analyze smaller amounts of data.
2. The cloud is just somebody else’s data storage and processing equipment. It’s actually not too dissimilar from time-shared computing in the 1970s. Cloud computing offers the opportunity to decrease computing costs but also exposes your data to security risks. There is even talk that IIoT may change how we manage information by moving processing from large data centers back to the network.

Adopting IIoT

Timing your adoption depends on your current capabilities to monitor and manage your production and maintenance activities. Now is the time to do a “gut check,” reinforce your strengths, and eliminate your weaknesses. The better you can manage and learn from your current information, the greater your probability of success when network complexity and a tsunami of data start coming your way.

To prepare for coming changes in your plant data and monitoring you must master the following.

• Implementing a predictive maintenance program.
  Probably one of the greatest benefits of IIoT will be its ability to alert you to conditions that may lead to failure. You can significantly improve your plant reliability while reducing your maintenance costs now, probably with some of the tools you already have.
• Monitoring your devices and paying attention.
  You probably already have tonnage monitors and other monitoring devices. If you investigate the symptoms of out-of-normal operating conditions, you’ll find that vibration, noise, and lubrication monitoring can alert you to potential failures before they occur.
• Learning how to convert data into useful information.
  Turning raw data into valuable information requires knowledge of your production environment, the ability to define a population, a reliable sample from that population, and the ability to generate and analyze the sample’s statistics.
• Talking to your supply chain.
  Discuss plans and issues with your customers and suppliers. You’ll find that they have the same concerns as you do. Keeping an open line of communication helps you plan to meet your supply chain’s expectations.
• Opening a conversation with your information technology (IT) staff.
  Keep in mind that IT has an underwhelming track record with complex enterprise implementations.

Installing Enterprise Applications Remains Difficult

While consultants, software suppliers, and machine suppliers are happy to sell you their equipment and services, your success ultimately depends on your preparation, vision, and knowledge. In my experience, most implementation failures result from poorly defined vision, the lack of understanding participants have of the fundamentals of the business, unrealistic expectations, and bad design decisions.

In a Panorama Consulting Solutions 2013 survey, 72 respondents who installed ERP systems reported the following:

• More than 50 percent of projects came in over budget.
• More than 60 percent experienced scheduling overruns.
• About 60 percent felt they received less than half of the expected benefits from their ERP implementation.

Customer satisfaction with ERP implementation also was quite low:

• Software vendor: 40 percent satisfied.
• Third-party implementation service: 25 percent satisfied.
• Ability to meet business needs: 49 percent satisfied.
• Employee adoption: 35 percent satisfied.
• Overall implementation experience: 44 percent satisfied.

These results confirm what we already know about installing new applications. Success depends on your own preparation, knowledge, requirements, and expectations. Third-party consultants can help you facilitate your project, but they lack the depth of understanding to offer guidance in business and user issues.

Surviving the Data Onslaught

Information management offers many advances that either can help you better manage your operations or frustrate you and your IT people beyond belief. In an industry where many suppliers barely read their tonnage monitors, the probability is higher toward frustration.

Your best chance of surviving the onslaught of data is to understand your current issues and the information required to manage them properly. Otherwise, you’ll be at the mercy of equipment and IT suppliers who don’t understand your plant floor nearly as well as you and your people.