These days, if there’s not a selfie of it, did it really happen? In the U.S., 60% of men and 64% of women say they have taken a selfie. And not just people – even NASA’s Curiosity Rover recently shared a selfie when it completed a record-setting climb on Mars. There are close to 100 million selfies taken each day globally – it’s the way we document and record events in our lives and share them with others.
In preparing a presentation on the industrial internet and brilliant machines, I realized that this idea of machines connected and communicating with each other might be considered a “Machine Selfie” (#machineselfie). For example, this is the case for those machines that are part of the critical industries including power, oil & gas, water, and mining. There is so much data collected from pumps, wellheads, conveyors, generators and filtration equipment and this information can give an operator critical performance data. This is data that can be used to help prevent unplanned downtime and save energy. A snapshot, a “selfie,” of the machine health, pressure, flow, or performance can be shared remotely using the cloud.
One example is an Arizona utility that has taken utility efficiency to a new level using evaluation and productivity improvement processes, advanced metering infrastructure, and cloud-based data analytics and presentation technology to reduce water losses and put real-time monitoring of water use in the hands of their clients.
What if machine data is somewhat like the memory history we are creating with our “selfies?” With the evolution of the industrial internet, we can see an exponential growth in how machine data is being used to help save money and reduce downtime. In the industrial space, #machineselfies are becoming as popular as personal selfies are in the social space. Plants can see trends and take action sooner and make decisions based on what the machine is telling them.