What Is CMMS Software: A Complete Guide
What is CMMS software? Like a doctor’s bag, it gives you tools that allow you to monitor and manage the health and status of your most critical assets, machinery, and infrastructure. This can include the ability to use a machine’s real-time conditions and vitals to identify and address any abnormalities that might lead to system failures. In today’s industry 4.0 environment, manufacturers are moving towards proactive maintenance—even predictive maintenance over reactive maintenance to improve machine uptime, optimize operations, and stay ahead of compliance and competition. The aim is to keep the productivity chain unbroken and mitigate future risks down the...
Preventive vs Predictive Maintenance
How to move from reactive to proactive maintenance A plant's overall success is heavily influenced by the effectiveness of its maintenance organization and how well maintenance activities are incorporated with the facility's production schedule. With millions of dollars invested in equipment, manufacturers need to prioritize and even emphasize their maintenance strategy. Today, we’re seeing that more and more facilities moving away from legacy maintenance methods where you only fix what’s broken, when it breaks. This antiquated method leads to lost productivity, disruption in production, and waves of negative effects felt throughout the entire organization. Now more than ever facilities need...
Machine as a Service + IIOT = Flexibility + Real Opportunity for American Manufacturing: An equation that can’t be ignored
American manufacturers cannot do anything about the pandemic, but they do have one economic arrow in their quiver to use to counteract the downward economic direction – that is, adopting the Machine as a Service approach toward deploying additional machinery. American manufacturers who cannot come up with the capital to purchase new machinery can still gain a competitive advantage by using the same machinery on a MaaS basis. Taking advantage of the flexibility to deploy machinery via MaaS really changes the equation. When the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) is added to this equation, the American manufacturer benefits in another...
Manufacturing in a World of Disrupted Supply Chains
Supply chains are not impervious to disruption, be they caused by natural disasters (pandemics, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.), changes in political leadership, military actions, tariffs and viruses. That’s because manufacturers often rely on parts produced in countries around the world to manufacture their finished products. In the resulting world of turmoil, manufacturers can take decisive steps to deal with anticipated – and in some cases actual – disruption in their international supply chains. Part shortages are a distinct possibility, a situation that could cripple production and grind plants to a halt Fast action, advanced software required Though an extended parts shortage...
Mobilizing Your Maintenance Management Workforce to Minimize Downtime
With companies across vertical industries seeking predictive maintenance to minimize costly machine and production downtime in industrial manufacturing, interest in enabling a mobile workforce is climbing quickly. Providing maintenance staff access to your data from a smartphone or tablet lets them stay on top of issues at any time of day, from any location. The difference between expensive problems and smooth maintenance resolution can be just a matter of minutes. In fact, the average cost of downtime across all businesses is roughly $260,000 per hour. That's according to Aberdeen Group, a research and consulting firm. The answer? Provide your maintenance...
READYAsset Increases Plant Run Time Above 99% and Pays For Itself In Under 3-Years
Red Cedar Gathering uses the asset management to do predictive and preventive maintenance by monitoring and analyzing historical and real-time data such as temperatures and pressures. “The additional data helps us keep a close eye on the condition of the equipment,” says Velasquez. “We now proactively measure the condition of our equipment and set historical and condition-based rules. We record machine data to see the condition of our equipment and use preset rules to identify out-of-spec conditions.” “We can also now analyze the data and optimize the treating capabilities. We keep tighter thresholds on temperatures now and have a more...
Why Asset-Heavy Manufacturers Must Make Better Use IoT Data
In manufacturing plants, a high-performing, reliable asset base is critical. Maintenance staff must keep machines running and operating at peak efficiency. They can achieve this by using the data available to repair machines and systems before they break down and to fine-tune performance while they are running. That’s where the Internet of Things (IoT) comes in. Manufacturing is the industry that spent the most on IoT this year. IoT spending among manufacturers is largely focused on solutions that support manufacturing operations and production asset management. And for a good reason. IoT can deliver significant benefits by providing real-time status information...
What’s the Difference Between Preventive, Proactive, and Predictive Maintenance?
Downtime in a plant or facility leads to lost productivity. It disrupts operations, causes maintenance staff to divert time from scheduled projects, and can have significant negative business implications, including lost revenue, significant unplanned expenses, missed deadlines and damage to a company’s reputation. To avoid these problems, manufacturers and facility and plant managers are moving away from traditional maintenance methods where you wait for something to break, and then you fix it. Reactive approaches like this result in disruptions and unplanned downtime. A better approach is preventive maintenance, which is a routine for periodically inspecting equipment with the goal of...
Marrying Asset Management with Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) allows users to enhance their field of view with real-time superimposed digital information. The technology is now being more widely used in maintenance and repair operations, and its value is enhanced when complemented with data and historical knowledge from asset management systems. Using AR in maintenance and repair allows technicians to receive information about specific assets instantly. Similar to the way a person can use different monitors and projection devices to view data, an AR system would take data (in this case from an asset management system) and project it onto goggles or camera-enabled mobile devices for...
How Can READYTrak and READYAsset help your Supply Chain?
Asset tracking in supply chains is undergoing many changes that promise to deliver new benefits. Traditional asset tracking technologies like barcode and RFID ID are being supplemented or replaced with IOT enabled tracking methodologies. These new Internet of Things (IoT) devices can provide real-time tracking, as well as information on the condition of items in the field or in transit. Specifically, tracking tags and sensors can provide real-time location data about goods in transit or sitting in a warehouse. Additionally, some sensors can collect temperature and pressure data, or whether packaging is damaged. Unfortunately, many companies that use such sensors...