What is your current environment like?
Highly complex? With risk-rated assets? Perhaps not complex, but geographically distant?
Do you already have an efficient asset management system, or CMMs, sensors on the assets, but they are not yet integrated and only generate information when collected?
Have you not yet chosen a management system, or do you have a system that generates maintenance orders, but without much relevant information?
Do you want to implement a monitoring system, but have integrations that need care and attention?
Do you have a little bit of each item mentioned above?
The first step is to know where you are at each stage, even if it's at the beginning. The vast majority of companies are still out there, some a little further on, others just starting out. The important thing is to go ahead, map out this process and know where you want to get to, then time, cost and effort.
Before the pandemic, we had an expectation that 85% of companies in various sectors would be in Industry 4.0 by 2025. For some, the Covid 19 pandemic was a driving force that made them see that digitizing data, mobile, sensors and monitoring were a necessity today. They worked hard, online, made use of video meetings and with a common sense and will, they set off on this journey and have come a long way!
Some have not made this journey, have been a little more conservative and prefer to have more security, to know where the pandemic could be more under control, in order to move forward on this issue.
What's the difference between them? Each one is moving in their own time, but they all know when and where they want to go!
This is a question that we will soon be able to answer through prediction. The AI technology embedded in Industry 4.0 systems and suites, armed with data collected over a period of time, will be able to provide the information needed for greater productivity, reduced downtime, lower costs, improved audits, improved quantity and quality of purchases and predictability.
Companies will be able to price their products based on more real, reliable and easily accessible data.
Designing this journey and these stages with systems and companies with a consistent background, brings not only confidence, but also knowledge and the possibility of having more customized consultancies for each type of business.
Why? Because they started the journey with the sensors, the assets are sensorized, but they don't send information to any intelligence center, they are in them and then stored. Don't go down this road, it's like having a brand new car in the garage and not driving it!
Start with the basics, start with a good maintenance plan carried out in a good CMMS or EAM, then move on to IoT, this way you don't waste time or stop to do what should have been done in the beginning, your journey will certainly be more fluid and constant!