Smart Technology and Predictive Maintenance in Manufacturing

The Benefits of Predictive Maintenance in Manufacturing

Manufacturing in 2023 requires unprecedented levels of efficiency. Your workers need to maximise capacity for production using minimal resources and time without unplanned downtime that leaves your business vulnerable.

Most reactive maintenance events are predictable, particularly as sensors, analytics and IoT technology become more affordable, accessible and widely understood. The benefits of predictive maintenance in manufacturing are the use of data insights and predictive analytics to find and track failure patterns and alert you of upcoming problems. By anticipating failure, preparation can be put in place to prevent or limit disruption by planning the best actions before they happen.

“End-user organisations have improved the quality of relevant information they provide as part of service requests they make to outside vendors. Vendors in this Critical Capabilities research go beyond condition-based, maintenance-based work order generation to offer support for increasingly complex machine-assisted triage and diagnostics. This will help accelerate them down the path toward direct and automated support for machine customers.” - Gartner, Field Service Management report, 2022.

Smart technology in manufacturing allows you to plan downtime and maximise up-time to prevent costly disruption to your business. You can predict failure, set accurate maintenance schedules, order spare parts and manage technicians.

There are many benefits of a predictive maintenance program:

• Save high costs related to the production hours lost to maintenance.
• Cover expenses related to parts, supplies and time for the equipment to be fixed.
• Preventing expensive failures from occurring.
• Reduce overstock in inventory.
• End-to-end visibility and optimisation of your supply chain.

Syscom understands that your needs are constantly changing. Adopting the digital technology of predictive maintenance can reduce downtime in manufacturing to minimise issues with reliability or quality. Manufacturing is a complex process, and ERP is a modern solution that can help prepare your business for the future. 

Applying Predictive Maintenance in Manufacturing

In the current climate, it is critical to include intelligent maintenance in your annual business objectives as it plays a crucial role in keeping running costs low, anticipating and planning for failures, creating proactively planned work orders, and reducing downtime in manufacturing. It needs to be applied to your entire operation so that it causes minimal disruption, and can be included in master scheduling and material requirements planning and production capacity plans. This is all about staying in complete control of your processes.

Preventative maintenance requires machinery to be connected to sensors and control systems. The data collected by the sensors is transferred to your IT system. Artificial Intelligence (AI) converts this into meaningful data to create maintenance plans which can create work orders or initiate OT (Operational Technology) changes. These will then be communicated across departments affected by the results such as capacity planning and production scheduling which take this data into account and make the necessary adjustments.

Modern machinery is designed to repeat operations continuously with zero error. Interconnecting manufacturing to digital platforms allows machinery to work continuously and repeatedly to produce high-quality items. Machinery wear and tear (for e.g. cutting blades getting dull) comes with the territory. A manufacturing ERP system that builds predictive maintenance into the operational plan can constantly maintain a smooth process.

If you want to reduce downtime in manufacturing with smart applications, you need to plan and assess your business infrastructures. Smart technology in manufacturing needs to be connected to a company-wide manufacturing ERP software system to see a quantifiable impact. Siloed departments that don’t share data are all too common in maintenance. Crafting a true SMART factory can automate your processes and grant you a holistic view of all your people, processes and systems. Predictive maintenance in manufacturing utilises both AI (Artificial Intelligence) and BI (Business Intelligence) to convert information from production equipment, operational technology, and sensors, into meaningful, actionable insights for minimal disruption.