This article will discuss:
- Advanced servitization and the role digital transformation solutions play in delivering it
- The condition monitoring process, technologies used, and its support for servitization
- The benefit of condition monitoring and servitization
To offer advanced servitization services, original equipment manufacturers must leverage digital transformation technologies to provide optimized working conditions to end-users. The intersection between servitization of the machine and optimizing the utilized equipment is where condition monitoring comes into the picture.
Introducing advanced servitization and the importance of digital transformation
Advanced servitization focuses on offering end-users the crucial products they work with on a contractual basis. The contract generally involves the end-user utilizing the equipment or asset through a specified cycle and making payments according to a signed agreement. Heavy equipment manufacturers focus their advanced servitization services on providing assets that are generally expensive on a pay-per-use basis. This process, which can be coined as the servitization of the machine, requires extensive technical support.
One great example is the auto-manufacturing giant, Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce offers an advanced servitization of the machine plan to both large and small aviation enterprises looking to lease its expensive jet engines. Rolls-Royce’s servitization plan includes the choice of utilizing some of its engines or purchasing an engine maintenance plan. Both services focus on ensuring the engines function at their optimal capacity when in use.
Customers pay per hour of optimized engine function only and lose no money due to machine downtime. Rolls-Royce handles maintenance and collects the data from each production cycle, which means a servitized engine must be monitored round the clock to ensure optimal performance.
Four decades ago, the most advanced manufacturing equipment, such as the CNC machine, was equipped to track rudimentary data such as production throughput. These assets were not capable of monitoring their environment or their operations. The advent of IoT and advanced smart devices with the capability to do so has opened up new horizons.
Today, Rolls-Royce can leverage the digital-transformation technologies of this decade to track its servitization offerings, and so too can other OEMs. Collecting data across servitized assets is the foundation of condition monitoring, and the digital transformation of the factory floor makes it possible.
What is condition monitoring or condition management?
Condition monitoring is the process of monitoring the parameters of a machine to discover pattern changes that signify a coming error or defect in real-time. Although condition monitoring may seem like predictive analytics and its attempt to forestall downtime by analyzing equipment data, there is an important difference. Predictive analytics relies on historical data while condition monitoring captures the data required to create predictive analytical strategies.
Statistics show that the application of predictive analytics can reduce downtime caused by equipment breakdown by 70%. Implementing a condition-management strategy ups the ante by ensuring shop-floor equipment functions at its optimal capacity every time it is utilized.
The digital transformation technologies that support condition monitoring include both hardware and software solutions. For example, IoT and edge devices are capable of capturing data from the equipment on the shop floor and transferring them to analytical software platforms. In the case of an edge device, it could use the analytical resources it has to analyze data and send alerts or notifications according to its analysis.
Supporting servitization with condition monitoring
Condition-management software applications support servitization of the machine in important ways such as ensuring end-users get optimized hours every time they log into servitized equipment. Other ways in which condition monitoring supports servitization include:
- Providing utilization prompts – Capturing data and analyzing it is just one step of the condition-management process. Visualizing results using digital-transformation solutions such as a web HMI ensures operators know exactly what’s going on as they use the equipment. Thus, end-users can monitor machine usage, take advantage of benchmark data to optimize productivity, and monitor how subscription hours are being used.
- Optimized advanced services – When paying for jet time or engine time, the end-user expects an asset functioning at its optimal best for the hours paid. Condition monitoring ensures every parameter attached to the equipment’s function is being tracked. Noticing defects in real-time ensures they are dealt with quickly and that an hour’s subscription provides an hour of optimized services.
- A window into machine utilization – OEMs offering servitization can also gain insight into how the equipment they produce is being utilized by the end-user. Condition monitoring enables OEMs to understand how equipment reacts to real-world challenges and how far it can be pushed for assets to function optimally. The data that condition monitoring captures also serves as a launchpad for developing more innovative equipment to meet the needs of the end-user.
Conclusion
Servitization creates new pathways to revenue growth for OEMs, but this is only possible by applying digital-transformation technologies and condition monitoring to manage the process. While digital transformation captures machine data, condition monitoring utilizes the captured data to deliver the benefits of servitization.
