It may seem hard to believe that a majority of manufacturers are using technology that is at least 30 years old. Many of these decades-old systems work wonderfully for collecting and storing data, as well as monitoring systems. But these systems alone cannot help industrial companies meet the current challenges posed by digital transformation and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Many companies hesitate to take advantage of new IIoT opportunities because they believe such a change is too difficult and expensive. A recent LNS Research survey of more than 400 manufacturing executives showed the vast majority of companies do not have plans to invest in IIoT technology in the near future. Considering the high cost of many existing systems, it can be easy to understand why industrial companies are reluctant to invest in new technology. The upside is that there are affordable technologies developed specifically for the internet age that work with existing systems. These technologies can help manufacturers gain deep insights into process behavior and translate those into fast returns.
Next-generation software offers affordable self-service predictive analytics and easy search to the process industries.
TrendMiner
04/13/2017
Figure 1. Combining live data with historical context shortens the analysis latency to immediate, providing an opportunity to take actions even before an event can affect process performance. (Courtesy of TrendMiner)
Manufacturing execution systems (MES) were introduced in the early 1990s in an attempt to bridge the gap between plant floor SCADA systems and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. They also promised to provide analytics—such as key performance indicator (KPI) data—to improve plant floor operations. While they have been able to provide more advanced capabilities than SCADA systems, they are expensive and often require extensive engineering to implement. Additionally, they were developed for a different business era in which systems were still largely siloed and internet optimization was an afterthought.