August 2021

31 www.drivesncontrols.com July/August 2021 TALKING INDUSTRY n Christopher Hallum Regional Sales Manager UK & Ireland, UE Systems Christopher is an electrical engineer and trainer, having learned his trade in HM Armed Forces. He has been with UE Systems for five years, supporting industry by implementing predictive maintenance programmes and energy-saving schemes using ultrasound technologies. Pete Sopcik Marketing Manager, OtoSense Business Unit Analog Devices Pete has had key roles in ADI and manufacturing, ranging from project management and product development to controls engineering. OtoSense combines sensor data with expertise to deliver scalable, automated diagnostics including predictive maintenance for electric motors and quality control for end-of-line testing. Daniel Fern UK Country Manager Ixon Cloud Since joining to Ixon to lead its UK division in 2018, Daniel has been on a mission to helpmachine-builders and systems integrators to improve their service, support and data analytics through the power of IIoT. This has resulted in considerable growth for Ixon in the UK over the past two years. Michael LeFeuvre Regional Product Manager Red Lion Controls Michaël Lefeuvre has spent more than a decade working in various departments of Red Lion Controls. An important part of his job is to position the company’s portfolio in regional markets and to support its sales andmarketing team. Andy Pye Webinar Chair and Consulting Editor DFA Media Andy has edited many leading UK design and manufacturing titles over the past four decades. He is a graduate material engineer and spent five years in engineering consultancy before entering technical publishing in 1980. led by Michael LeFeuvre of Red Lion Controls. “Artificial intelligence will be a big future trend for these reasons,”he said.“Industry 4.0 is preparing the field, because it is creating a huge amount of data. And with that data and deep learning technology, the systems will be more accurate and better. Data and people will be merged on the production line! And it needs people with more and different skills. “Through using the Internet the whole time, the younger generation are used to using AI,”LeFeuvre commented.“As soon as they have a problem, they go to the Internet and try to find a solution. It’s a newway of thinking. But Siri-assistant-like approaches are not yet common on the shopfloor – we’re going to have to wait a few years for that." Collating data According to Chris Hallum fromUE Systems, some people confuse Maintenance 4.0 with the need to have all monitoring systems remote or online.“This is not necessary,”he said.“It’s about looking at criticality, access and other considerations. The ideal case would be to have both inspector-led routines and online systems, working together. Visiting an asset and using human senses are both still vitally important. “Many industries utilise multiple predictive technologies to enhance their understanding of asset health,”Hallum reported.“Most technologies utilise their own reporting and analysing platforms, and this can make it difficult to gain an overall understanding when trying to collate all this data. By centralising them into a CMMS system, the overall picture can be pieced together better. “Data can be collected manually and uploaded to software that can be sent to CMMS systems viaWebhooks, or via remote, online systems that could connect direct to CMMS systems or cloud-based dashboards to be accessed from anywhere at any time.” Virtual maintenance Daniel Fern from Ixon Cloud argued that not all companies have the budget or expertise to embark on massive, multi- million pound IoT transformations. Are there tangible ways for companies to start small and still improve their maintenance procedures utilising Industry 4.0, he asked? “Who knows where we will be in the future. If 20 years ago, you were looking at tomorrow's world, we were meant to be flying around on hoverboards by now!,” Fern pointed out. “Do we see a point where perhaps in the near future there is no longer a requirement for a maintenance engineer – at least not one that sits on site and is an employee of the factory? “If OEMs continue to develop technologies and integrate them in ways that they can connect remotely, access the data and share it, why not? Is there a point where maintenance is fully provided by the company that built the machine and are the absolute experts on it? “If you envisage a factory that’s made up of 100 different machines, all from different manufacturers with their own speciality, maybe there’s a point in the future where connectivity is so good that maintenance is provided directly by all these companies and not by onsite engineers, who are really jacks of all trades who do not know any individual machine at a deeper level.” Pete Sopcik agreed.“Certainly, we can't rule that out. I would say that though that the advantage that some maintenance and facilities teams bring to the table, is that, while they may not be the expert on that particular asset, they do understand how that asset works best within its overall environment. I still think there's a lot of value in the localised understanding of the process, the operations and how everything is working together.” “Remote access is a very easy win,”Fern concluded.“Any large machine-builder should already be utilising it because just one site visit saved will pay back the cost – it’s not expensive. From the factory owner’s side, would you not want to be able to receive support quicker?Would you not want to be able to get your machine back online faster? Because as we mentioned before, downtime can cost thousands.” n Talking Industry The Panel The full Talking Industry discussion can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z2z9fDxo9s. A longer version of the article will be posted on our Web site (www.drivesncontrols.com ).