Big Data | Merge Control and Maintenance Data for Better Efficiencies

Automation • Condition Monitoring • IIoT

Big Data | Merge Control and Maintenance Data for Better Efficiencies

Grant Gerke | April 6, 2017

The IIoT framework shows how industrial data moves to the cloud for this Agile pilot project.

There’s an interesting Q&A post on Big Data, change culture, and control and maintenance data via a recent blog post from ARC’s IIoT Viewpoints site. The discussion includes Vish Avasarala, Co-founder of Saint Software Consultants, and Kenneth Smith, General Manager, Energy at Hortonworks.

There’s an interesting point about industrial manufacturing’s lack of flexibility, in general, and the challenges to change a work culture. I agree with this sentiment, in general, but the Agile project approach may help ignite cloud initiatives with some conservative manufacturers.

In the April Maintenance Technology print issue — and soon on maintenanctechnology.com — I write about HIROTEC’s condition monitoring pilot project that would fall under the Agile category. HIROTEC, a Tier-One supplier of exhaust systems for automotive OEMs, recently produced a six-week agile pilot project at their Michigan facility.

The goal was to show results quickly to management, albeit a small sample — eight legacy and new CNC machines.

Justin Hester, from HIROTEC, discussed the condition monitoring/cloud analytics pilot project in a recent National Association Manufacturing webinar:

HIROTEC argues, let’s do a small project. Let’s do a project that’s only six weeks long. It gets people excited. It’s not something that’s going to drone on for the next two years, where they have to devote the next two years of their life to as well as these other requests that will come in from the organization. They see light at the end of the tunnel already.

Hester added, “the Detroit pilot application was a success and HIROTEC is moving forward with IIoT pilot projects in Japan that deal with quality manufacturing.”