The Internet of Things (IoT) is making objects all around us smart and connected, transforming nearly every industry imaginable. For manufacturers, IoT technology can provide valuable insight into inefficient steps of the manufacturing process, prevent plant shut-downs or lags in production, and eliminate manual equipment checks.
"Although the concept is on the cutting edge of tech trends, manufacturers do not need to hire a team of tech experts, build a system from the ground up or invest in costly new equipment to reap the benefits. IoT companies like Atomation are making high-tech monitoring and big data insights accessible and affordable to businesses of all sizes," said a company spokesperson.
Atomation specializes in connecting legacy objects to the cloud, allowing companies to capture previously unavailable data and use that data to improve operations and make real-time, informed decisions. Its end-to-end IoT platform is customizable, delivers robust data sets and can be integrated into a company's system within weeks.
How does IoT work?
In the typical IoT platform, small sensors are attached to "dumb" objects. These objects can include nearly anything on a manufacturing floor. The sensors include a circuit board that collects diagnostic data such as changing temperatures, unusual vibration, moisture level or any number of other metrics. The circuit board then sends the data to a mobile device or desktop via the cloud. Some IoT platforms, including Atomation, use edge computing, which allows only the exception occurrences to be reported. In other words, instead of being flooded with thousands of data points each day, company operators are only alerted of unusual conditions that could eventually cause a problem.
Benefits for Manufacturers
Manufacturers are predicted to invest as much as $70 billion in IoT solutions by 2020. The push is fueling rapid growth for Atomation, which moved its headquarters to the U.S. from Israel in late 2017. In the first few months of 2018, major customers had signed deals to fully scale with Atomation's platform-less than a year after beta testing began. One such customer is Andritz, an Austrian plant engineering group that will install up to 10,000 sensors in the coming year.
One leading motivator for manufacturers integrating with the technology is predictive maintenance, which helps companies to fix errors or take care of small problems before they balloon into crises.
Troubleshooting inefficient steps in production and uncovering the cause of production errors are additional motivators. With IoT, manufacturers can know exactly how each component of the manufacturing process is performing with the push of a button.
Atomation, for example, integrated its platform with an automobile company that wanted to measure the efficiency of the painting process for car parts, correct any lags and determine whether excessive motion on the line is causing paint errors. This simple solution is saving the automobile company valuable resources and time.
SIDEBAR
Atomation connects legacy objects to the internet, making the object alive, smart and able to communicate previously unavailable data.
Atomation is flexible, scalable and totally customizable for manufacturers. Highlights include:
- Atomation's circuits can easily interface with any sensor, which means manufacturers can use whatever sensor makes the most sense for their case. Anything from heat and vibrations to humidity and moisture level can be tracked via Atomation's system.
- The data collected by the sensor can be accessed immediately via any mobile device-this provides company decision-makers with real-time data and allows for remote monitoring and control where it was not possible before.
- Perhaps the most common use case for Atomation's technology is predictive maintenance-this means plants can anticipate and correct problems before they cause cascading and costly mistakes.
- Integration is fast and easy-Atomation is able to connect companies in approximately 30 days.
Authored by Guy Weitzman, CEO and Co-Founder, Atomation
For more information contact:
Atomation
info@atomation.net
www.atomation.net