Machine downtime not only reduces productivity in your manufacturing plant but also affects the ROI. Any unplanned downtime can bring setbacks like increased repair cost, delay in production, and reduced value in the manufacturing industry. It also impacts OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) negatively. Thankfully, predictive maintenance & digital transformation solutions lend a helping hand.
The manufacturing industry can improve OEE, reduce maintenance costs, and decrease delays in production with the help of the predictive maintenance concept. This concept plays a vital role in digital process management. Let’s understand how predictive maintenance increases a machine’s ROI over the period. But before that, we will go through the way this concept works in the manufacturing sector.
Predictive Maintenance – Introduction and the Way It Works in Manufacturing Sector
Predictive Maintenance is a technique useful for detecting anomalies in various operations and possible defects in equipment so that you can fix them before they damage the equipment. This technology uses data analytics tools and techniques to predict possible issues. Simply put, predictive maintenance enables companies to prevent unplanned reactive maintenance.
Talking about the manufacturing companies, the predictive maintenance concept provides condition-monitoring tools to track the performance of any equipment during idle, normal, and peak conditions. The data fetched from equipment operating at different performances can help manufacturers plan for maintenance in advance to prevent any downtime or failure. In digital transformation solutions, predictive maintenance can fetch real-time data with the help of connected devices and sensors attached to the machine.
Sensors can capture physical parameters like vibration, pressure, temperature, and chemical parameters like the quantity of chemicals and the level of liquids in real-time. This data will be pushed to a Cloud from where AI/ML-powered systems analyze and process it for predicting future problems related to the maintenance of the machine. Based on these actionable insights, the maintenance specialists can make plans to address these issues in advance.
In digital transformation strategy, predictive maintenance plays a vital role while offering a plethora of benefits for the manufacturing sector.
Top Benefits of Predictive Maintenance for Manufacturing
As per an Aberdeen report, the average cost of unplanned machine downtime is $260,000 per hour. This can impact the profit and production of any manufacturing industry. Predictive maintenance can address this issue effectively while offering the following benefits-
- Capture real-time data based on various conditions of the machine
- Increase transparency and minimize machine failures
- Predict machine downtime in advance
- Reduced instances of damage or downtime
- Improved production rate
- Increased efficiency of machine and operator’s safety
- Reduced maintenance costs
- Meet product deadline and increased profits
Unlike planned maintenance and repairing of machines at regular intervals, it is better to prevent machine failures and identify the patterns responsible for downtime for ensuring the maximum productivity in the shop floor. It can reduces overall TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) with machine maintenance. In a way, predictive maintenance is important in digital process management and implementation of Industry 4.0 in the manufacturing industry.
Also Read- Top Five Benefits of Digital Transformation Solutions for Manufacturing
Role of Predictive Maintenance in Manufacturing
Predictive maintenance is useful especially where humans can’t intervene and monitor the data in shop floors. Condition-based monitoring and enterprise IoT solutions can assist you to get actionable insights based on the real-time data for every movement of the machine. Talking about the use cases, we will see how predictive maintenance is useful in tyre and pipe manufacturing.
Tyre Manufacturing
These days, new modes of cars and various variants keep on coming. It keeps tyre manufacturers on their toes. Starting with Mixing & Cooling to Tyre Building and Labelling, the tyre manufacturing process is highly complex and needs energy efficiency and stability. Here, the most critical components are uninterrupted power supply and media supply. The media supply includes the supply of hot water, steam, nitrogen, and air.
Predictive maintenance, as a part of digital transformation solutions for tyre industry, can help manufacturers to address all the challenges of industry.
Pipe Manufacturing
Though not as complex as tyre manufacturing & pipe manufacturing is highly challenging because of growing competition. Here, extrusion and injection moulding are critical steps and it is necessary to keep temperature and pressure in check continuously. A customized digital transformation solution with a built-in predictive maintenance feature can assist the pipe manufacturers to monitor proactively and predict the issues in advance.
Concluding Lines
The manufacturing industry is thriving at a rapid pace. It offers a lot of opportunities and challenges. Manufacturers can stay ahead of the curve by grabbing opportunities with the help of digital transformation solutions. It is possible to improve productivity and increase ROI in your manufacturing company with predictive maintenance.
Rejig Digital is a renowned digital transformation solutions provider across various industry sectors including automotive, manufacturing, chemical, pharmaceutical, FMCG, healthcare, logistics, and the like. We assist you to optimize core processes effectively while automating key processes. Do you want to know more about our solutions? Just drop us a line at info@rejigdigital.com, and we will assist you in making a digital transformation strategy
