Recently, my wife and I picked up a few key pieces of technology for our house and started playing around with them. You might be familiar with them or even have some yourself; light bulbs and outlets that can be controlled with your voice, just to name a couple. Not only that, but they can play music, order things and set up scenes or different moods you want the house to have; how many of these do you have?
I wonder how much of this automation is being used in the real world of business while making your products… Does your company have sensors on their equipment? What about meters to measure pressure, temperature, etc? Do you then integrate these details into your maintenance system like Maximo or others? If not, are you considering this and planning or thinking it might go away?
Technology is amazing stuff and continues to change; some for the better, and some for the worse (people using their skills to hack). I try to focus on the good. For example, mobility and using little embedded cameras to see who’s at your front door when you’re across town. Or deploying sensors into remote locations that are dangerous for humans or require additional protection; why not rely on the sensor information? Costs are continually dropping and more options are becoming available, so how can this be a bad thing. I recall days (OK, years) past when even an asset tag cost in the range of dollar amounts, not pennies like many do today.
It’s funny, as I type, I think of things way outside of work – such as seeing the movie “Alien Covenant” the other day. Why not send a probe into the room to look over the alien’s nest – I mean come on! I hope if that ever happened to me, I would think, say “no way” and run! Sensors are located in so many places already it’s almost crazy. The simple click of a toggle switch inside the coaster that you put your glass on, for example, when depressed turns on a few LED lights. How does this apply to your critical assets? Without knowing who’s reading this, right now you know best…
What are other uses? How many other sensors can be used? What would you do with all the time you can save by letting sensors do even some of the monitoring for you? I imagine there are plenty of productive things we all could use just a few more minutes of time during the day with. Sure it’s cool and fun to say “turn on the light in the office, or it’s cold, please warm up the office, or play my favorite band” but how much of this same automation could be used in your plant?
Kind of makes me think who’s set up… “Alexa, open Work Order for a leak under pump 11430”
