Remote - Spring 2015 - (Page 12)

Feature Article What to Expect in the Equipment Industry in 2015 Andrew Kinder, VP Industry Solution Strategy Infor By 2020, it's predicted that there will be 33 billion connected devices on the planet. Nearly three times the 10 to 12 billion estimated today. Already present in our lives through our vehicles, our homes and even on our person with wearable tech, embedded sensors will be deployed in almost every piece of equipment along the supply chain. Constantly gathering real-time data about the equipment, it's operating conditions, the environment it is operating in and how an individual asset is performing compared to the fleet, the information and insight available will be far beyond anything we have had access to before with enormous opportunities for equipment manufacturers, dealers, service and rental providers to lower costs, improve service and drive new sources of revenue. Let's take a look at how these new technologies can be harnessed and the actions we must take if we want to reap the advantage of first mover. Broadly, the opportunities fall into two categories: 1. Operational Excellence - utilizing the new technologies to improve efficiencies, services and asset productivity and, in so doing, lower costs to improve margins 2. Service Innovation - exploiting the information now at your fingertips to create new services for your customers that either improve your competitiveness or create new, unimagined revenue streams Your Equipment is Talking - Are You Listening? Utilizing the information from embedded sensors to transition from preventative maintenance to predictive maintenance is one proven way to lower costs and improve service. Most equipment is still maintained today on a time or volume basis (e.g. the time interval between service inspections or how many kilowatt hours of energy the equipment consumes). However, realtime monitoring of equipment performance, which considers factors such as operating temperatures, flow rates and energy usage, is a far better indicator of when equipment is in need of maintenance, giving you options to service earlier in the cycle, avoiding machine breakdowns, or later in the cycle, lowering repair costs. This flexibility in service scheduling can create new revenue opportunities by taking advantage of rental demand spikes while also safely rescheduling maintenance plans. In addition, think of how much time is lost today by multiple engineering visits to remote equipment, first to diagnose and then repair it. Sophisticated self-diagnostic sensors on equipment make it more efficient to identify the fault immediately, so that the right engineer with the right service pack and repair parts are dispatched the first time. This is also an area where service innovation really starts to profit. Equipment dealers and service providers are only scratching the surface of potential new revenue streams derived from the information from their digital business network. Think of the opportunities to advise customers on their service schedules, how to efficiently operate a mechanical digger to save 10 percent on fuel, for example, or what oil and spare parts to use to help customers minimize their long term operating costs? All of this information can be taken from real data across the entire fleet, not just an individual equipment unit. Real-time information has an inherent value, if only you can identify the revenue opportunity associated with it. 12 www.RemoteMagazine.com What if Your Employees Never Came to Work? Another tech-led innovation changing the equipment service landscape is mobility. Service engineers need to be on the road maintaining expensive assets, not stuck in an office doing paperwork. Social and mobile technologies allow service enterprises to boost the productivity of their workforce through applications designed to assist with job scheduling and routing between jobs, on-the-job work order reporting, spare parts replenishment, diagnostic and maintenance help on site and to quickly connect the field engineers with other experts in the business. But what if technicians didn't even have to attend the equipment for maintenance? Connected devices are making diagnostic data available remotely, delivering the possibility to identify, diagnose and even repair equipment via software updates and remote fixes. Every avoided trip represents a significant cost savings and a boost to equipment utilization and profitability. It is hard to conceive of this world without mobile and it's unlikely that within a few years equipment businesses will access information in any way other than through a smart-phone or ruggedized tablet. The Forecast is Cloudy As cloud applications move beyond stand-alone HR and CRM products and into complete solutions designed to meet the needs of an industry such as equipment, more companies will yield the economic and flexibility benefits of deploying software as a service, rather than owning and managing it themselves. Software solutions purchased as a service have the benefits of no upfront license costs, no annual maintenance costs and no hardware and running costs. The software provider is also responsible for keeping you on the latest release and your data secure all at a predictable monthly cost. As the equipment industry looks forward to 2015, it is clear that the technology-savvy, alert and agile businesses will come out ahead. Embedded sensors, real-time information, mobility and cloud deployment will be major factors that equipment service and rental providers will utilize to their advantage. The sooner organizations get on board, the sooner they can reach the next level of customer satisfaction, service innovation and profitability. As manufacturing output returns to growth, every organization along the equipment industry's supply chain - from equipment dealers, to rental and service providers, to distributors - stands to improve financially by being part of the growing technology evolution that we've been seeing the past few years. With the escalating buzz and confidence surrounding topics such as cloud, predictive maintenance, social business and mobile applications, organizations need to be able to use this technology in smart ways, and find partners to help them quickly increase efficiencies and start seeing a return on investment. As a first step toward adopting new technology, equipment manufacturers, dealers and rental operators need to take the time to carefully consider their business goals, focus on market opportunities and pain points that need to be overcome, and research the various new technologies available to them, while considering the short-term and long-term benefits of each. Customers have high expectations, and this will only continue to increase in 2015, and seek added capabilities from the equipment itself - as well as from equipment dealers. It's becoming more and more clear that smart organizations need to adopt new technology processes to transform equipment operations in the field to be successful now and in years to come. What to Look for Now: Moving Operations to the Cloud As the equipment industry learns to better adapt to a global economy, they will undoubtedly also need to better monitor a global network of suppliers, contractors and partners. A complete real-time view of the end-to-end value chain will be essential to creating the collaborative and customercentric approach, which cloud technology can offer. In addition, being able http://www.RemoteMagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Remote - Spring 2015

Editor's Choice
The Impact of OPC UA and Information Modeling on Monitoring Solutions
Protecting Critical Infrastructure: Understanding the Threat to SCADA Networks
Small Power, Big Benefits – Fuel Cells for Remote and Off-Grid Applications
What to Expect in the Equipment Industry in 2015
Wireless Well Pad Retrofit
IT-OT Convergence: The Importance of Aligning Historically Disparate Technologies
Internet of Things North Americs Preview
SCADA
Networking
Security
Onsite Power
Industry News

Remote - Spring 2015