Unlock trapped business value with a transformative asset management strategy
In my last blog, I talked about how connected operations is transforming the future of factories.
This requires the combination of technology, people, and process to enable virtual ecosystems and feedback loops across connected smart products, rich data platforms, and connected customers and employees. These systems define an organization’s competitiveness and can truly change the entire industry landscape.
One of the key enablers of connected operations is driving optimal performance of the machinery on the floor and across the value chain. This has the potential to drive unprecedented levels of new business value—value that is built on being predictive, proactive, and flexible in order to optimize factories, bring down costs, and drive optimal efficiencies.
Digital transformation enables new business processes
For the first time in many decades, we see that technology has outpaced the evolution of business processes. Increasing volumes of data, advancements in analytics and intelligence, and the ubiquity of cloud computing have shifted the landscape. These new technologies enable a virtual collaboration and flow of information that drives performance improvements for facilities and equipment. But in order to extract value and make assets more efficient and valuable, you need to have the right business processes in place to best leverage the technology. Only then can you free up the trapped data and insights that will allow you to create new ways of doing business that drive process improvements, enable better service, and ensure new levels of quality.
How is this possible? Let’s take a closer look.
For manufacturers, it is critical to manage and optimize the performance of your machinery and equipment in process operations. To accomplish this, each asset needs to be converted into a digital piece of information so that you can simulate and digitalize the space around it. This is the concept of the “digital twin,” which is a virtualized version of a physical asset and its context. The digital twin allows communication across that virtualized environment to help you better understand, through technologies like augmented reality, how the asset is being used and how it is performing based on the specs for which it was designed. This insight will give you the data to then evaluate ways to enhance the equipment design and its performance as needed. You can also drive condition-based monitoring practices, which will allow you to monitor and manage the energy of the asset down to the operational level.
Take for example, how robots are driving new levels of efficiencies. We talked previously about Goldman Sach’s concept of ‘cobots,’ where people can collaborate with robots as if they are human. And robots can even interact with each other. This level of collaboration can only be achieved at the moment when we virtualize the environment, enabling you to enhance your processes first in simulation, then confidently put those into action to improve the task at hand or even improve the performance of the production environment overall.
Sandvik Coromant: combining human and digital intelligence
One company that is leading in this area is Sandvik Coromant, a global engineering organization that produces machining tools and tooling systems for the manufacturing industry. Using Azure IoT Suite and Dynamics 365, we helped Sandvik Coromant develop a new in-process predictive analytics manufacturing solution that that uses the digital twin concept to tie all of the elements of the supply chain and fabrication process together. The solution collects machining and tool data and sends it to Microsoft Azure for immediate analysis using Machine Learning algorithms from Cortana Intelligence to optimize the process in real time and train the system to think as proficiently as a service engineer would.
This intelligent system is then capable of learning and then predicting outcomes over maintenance, quality, machine performance, or energy consumption. This allows Sandvik Coromant to learn more about how their cutting tools can be improved and implement those improvements—whether that’s automatically adjusting equipment, notifying technicians when maintenance is needed, or alerting plant managers of a potential failure. In this case, the digital twin is smart enough to self-tune-up and only alert for help when it’s actually needed. Sandvik Coromant’s story shows how, by managing the performance of the equipment, the company can then improve the quality of parts produced, all while minimizing machine idle time by 50%.
Interoperability is key in the new digital era
To achieve this level of collaboration, interoperability must be core to your strategy. With decades of investment on OPC Foundation standards, millions of applications and industrial equipment can communicate with each other. Interoperability between devices, assets, systems and people are critical for today’s factories to carry optimal and efficient operations. Microsoft has worked extensively with the OPC Foundation to integrate the OPC UA standard into our uniquely differentiated platform, including Microsoft Azure and the Azure IoT Suite, to deliver these standards in the cloud. Today, operators, machines and systems can interoperate in hybrid environments, accelerating the pace of business process transformation.
Like in the Sandvik Coromant solution described above, you can also ensure overall equipment effectiveness in order to evaluate how the manufacturing site is performing. This is about assessing your processes. What is your data strategy? Is the data that you collect meaningful to improve your operations? What is your business process intending to support moving forward? What are the improvement expectations for your business?
After you have assessed how your asset management strategy is performing, you can then start confidently managing capital investments and the depreciation of the equipment in order to perfect your process and increase the longevity of the component or equipment you are managing.
This ability to monitor, assess, and then refine your assets and internal practices will drive a quantum leap towards true operational excellence.
Trusted partnerships
Beyond Microsoft’s agile platforms and services, partners are key to our strategy to enable a digital manufacturing business. Specifically, for asset management, we look to our trusted partners including Accenture, Cognizant, ICONICS and Rockwell Automation as leaders in the industry. These partners design and deploy innovative, industry-focused solutions built on a Microsoft foundation, so manufacturers get best-in-class technology coupled with deep industry expertise.
By seizing the opportunity to optimize your operations through this kind of transformative asset management approach, you can accelerate productivity and responsiveness to innovate the products and services you offer to engage your customers and expand into new business models.
I look forward to hearing about your success!
If you would like to see this next revolution in digital transformation for yourself, please join us at Hannover Messe 2017 on April 24-28 in Hannover, Germany. Our industrial innovation showcases will demonstrate how some of the top manufacturers in the world are already realizing true business excellence and impactful ROI as a result of their transformations. We’ll give you a hands-on roadmap that will show you how your business can achieve similar results.
