Plant Works & Engineering March 2022

24 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk March 2022 Maintenance Matters Focus on: Maintenance Software T he case for the implementation of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology is unequivocal for any manufacturing plant wanting to remain competitive and achieve efficiencies that will lead to tangible bottom line savings. At the same time, the emergence of IIoT is blurring the lines between traditional silos within businesses, specifically between the control and automation engineers working on operational technology (OT) and the teams within networking, security and applications (IT). This brings to the fore fundamental cultural differences between those two teams, which must be understood and addressed to gain real benefit from IIoT and the digitisation of manufacturing. Applications that were traditionally based on local servers with defined functionality may have moved to the cloud and are expanding into different areas. Typical of this is in the case of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), which are a great aid in climbing the maintenance maturity ladder and increasing visibility and control of manufacturing and maintenance process. Collaboration between OT and IT teams To effectively bridge the gap between OT and IT, and to build a scalable maintenance technology solution, there needs to be a shared vision for a future maintenance software landscape - bringing together IIoT and CMMS capabilities. Real consideration needs to be given to the deployment of this in a modular and scalable fashion, and a focus on the change management required to get real value from these platforms is vital. A team of control engineers will sit in one silo, whose objective is to consider how to extract data from machines, and perhaps include elements such as condition monitoring and some kind of dashboard to compile insights. In another silo, an IT team will be considering or using enterprise platforms for functions such as procurement and stores management. There is often a huge void in the middle where not only do the teams not communicate effectively, but neither does the data. Before decisions can be made about which solutions to invest in, or in the case of where an investment has already been made, those two departments - each with different objectives - need to work together throughout the decision-making process towards a broader strategy on how different bits of the architecture fit together, or can do in the future. Having a series of platforms, each performing various functions that don’t effectively integrate into a single infrastructure, will be a decision truly regretted until the end of time. Consider your maintenance maturity position Most organisations, even if on the lower end of the maintenance maturity scale, will have some ambition to grow this maturity. Whether at the purely reactive end - which works well for firms that have honed their reactive approach to facilitate fast action - or at the predictive level reaching for the Holy Grail heights of optimisation, the objective of moving up the ladder or pyramid will be there. Having a software solution that assists with this now, while fulfilling progression, is a key consideration. Your maintenance approach may be planned - based on time intervals or usage - utilising historical data, or data gleaned from meters or sensors. It may be condition-based, based on data gathered using specific sensor technology combined with machine data. Or, it may be predictive, using the power of Artificial Intelligence/machine learning based on data Removing silos is key to unlocking the potential of maintenance software solutions. Richard Jeffers* reports. Unlocking the potential of maintenance software