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...

The lack of a spare part for one of the machines in your plant can lead to downtime. If a critical part is not in stock, the plant runs the risk of extended downtime from equipment failure. However, inventory is expensive. If a company is overstocked and has too many spare parts, it is overpaying for storage, and the parts may become obsolete as manufacturers update their lines. How do you find the right balance? With legacy equipment, a preventive maintenance approach could help provide that equilibrium between having too many parts sitting in stock rooms and not having a...

Last July, OSHA began to require U.S. businesses to submit their 300A forms digitally.  

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...

Today’s workplaces are dynamic. Workers come and go. When that happens, the experiences they’ve built up go also. The key is to retain the knowledge they have gained and keep it for others to use. How important is this issue? On average, about 20% of a company’s staff leaves in a given year. The numbers have steadily grown over the last five years. And more workers are expected to leave the workforce in the near future as about 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65 every day for the next 15 years. Employees leaving for a different job...