工厂运营可见性和智能

As a part of their Industry 4.0 initiative, the customer primarily wished to leverage IoT for maximizing operational efficiencies, productivity, reducing the energy footprints and maximizing capacity utilization. But there were several challenges at the outset:Firstly, the customer had multiple assembly lines with a diverse set of machines, systems and sensors, all communicating on different protocols. As such, primarily they needed a partner who could connect diverse set of assets on to a single platform and make use of underutilized ‘dark’ data.Secondly, the amount of data, data types and their applications was so vast, that the platform handling it, needed to be scalable and flexible.Lastly, Varroc faced the typical challenge of innovating in ‘Brownfield’ markets – wherein the real bottleneck is in integrating IoT in tandem with both the new and legacy equipment without any further CAPEX for asset substitution.

The thorough inspection of a finished product is an essential step in the quality-control process. In the beginning, quality checklists were accessed using paper on clipboards. As technology improved, computers were utilized. But computers required additional time to access, and couldn’t be carried to the equipment being inspected. Tablets replaced computers, but were easily broken and expensive to replace.  

The complex Business requirements and existing Legacy platforms posed challenges for Geith. Given the size of business, the costs had to be kept under strict control so as to justify the business case and extract the expected returns. Moreover, the implementation timelines were to be kept at a minimum, so as to avoid business disruption.