When it comes to incorporating IIoT-based technologies into their operations, users in the process and automation industries are often left navigating a sea of complexity and cost, but leveraging the power of IIoT doesn’t have to be risky; the right approach can improve a company’s bottom line within the first year of adoption.
That level of real business impact is exactly what’s been missing from many available IIoT-based solutions, says Brian Joe, wireless product manager at Emerson. Without a clear business case, potential users have been hesitant to invest in IIoT, given their concerns about security, data mapping, data integrity, overall cost, and return on investment.
What’s needed, Joe says, are solutions that directly address these issues and result in measurable operational improvements for manufacturers. For example, rather than expensive, overly complex solutions that require major overhauling of an existing architecture, manufacturers need scalable solutions that allow them to start small yet still derive measurable performance gains and a fast return on their IIoT investments, Joe says. This helps reduce the overall investment risk for these users and enables them to expand at a time that is right for them.
These solutions, he adds, aren’t about IIoT for the sake of IIoT; they’re about helping manufacturers become more proactive and predictive to recapture lost costs around different areas of their facilities – areas where they, collectively, suffer a whopping $1 trillion in annual losses due to inefficient operations.
With this intent, Emerson designed Plantweb Insight to be a secure, scalable IIoT-based solution that ties technology to performance. It’s an easy-to-install, web-based platform that helps users instantly make sense of plant data by leveraging pervasive sensing technologies and pre-built analytics to provide relevant-time monitoring and identification of abnormal situations for more than a dozen specific asset classes such as steam traps, pumps and heat exchangers.
Plantweb Insight, Joe explains, helps users to improve operations, reliability, safety and energy use in pursuit of becoming a Top Quartile performer.
As compared to their average industry peers, Top Quartile performers experience one-third the number of safety incidents; spend half as much on maintenance and operate with an incremental 15 days of available production each year; spend 20 percent less on production-related expenses; and spend one-third as much as the industry average on energy costs, with 30 percent less CO2 emissions.
Plantweb Insight enables plant operators and technicians to make measurable impact by empowering them with the information necessary to make informed decisions about the health and performance of key assets through a simple, actionable interface. And because the platform easily integrates with existing wireless infrastructure and OPC UA servers, customers can start with just one application and cost-effectively expand to take advantage of the entire suite of applications once they experience proven results and derive return on investment – and that doesn’t take long, Joe says.
For example, analysis of a 250,000 barrel-per-day refinery using Plantweb Insight’s corrosion monitoring application to provide real-time insight into pipe integrity shows that such a refinery could see annual savings of $5.5-6.5 million with an ROI realized in in only two months. Heat exchanger monitoring for fouling and efficiency results in annual savings of $2.7-3.6 million with an ROI realized in three months. And pressure relief valve monitoring results in annual savings of $2.4-$3.2 million with an ROI realized in six months.
“Emerson's Plantweb Insight addresses all key parts of the IIoT chain while allowing customers the flexibility to customize their solution to their needs,” Joe says. “Smaller installations can see benefits in mere weeks/months, while larger installations provide ROI with large bottom-line return.”
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