Industrial companies are caught in a two-way bind. On the one hand, it’s difficult to find, hire and retain skilled workers who can make the engineering, operations, and maintenance decisions needed to increase productivity. On the other hand, companies are collecting volumes of valuable data that could inform these decisions, but only a small percentage of it is being put to use.
In an article in Processing magazine, Emerson’s Vibhoosh Gupta says, “Process Productivity Gains Begin At The Edge,” and presents the concept of applying industrial edge automation controllers as a more effective way of gathering data, visualizing it, and using it to improve value versus traditional programmable logic controllers (PLCs) or supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems.
In the article, Vibhoosh considers the new data flows available with modern automation system architectures, the hardware options that can enable industrial edge computing and control, new potential revenue streams such as “capability as a service,” and renewable energy industry processes. He ends by saying, “Edge computing, whether used to efficiently gather data or as a more advanced integrated control platform, now offers many options to securely and easily integrate classic OT automation with new IIoT devices, and to link these devices and controllers to the cloud using modern IT-based technologies.”
Have you used industrial edge technology to improve productivity? How?