Increase asset performance and food safety with Industry 4.0 technologies

The global pandemic has accelerated the need for organizations to embrace Industry 4.0 and start realizing digital technology’s potential to positively impact their business operations. In fact, a recent McKinsey study reveals that six months into the pandemic, 94% of respondents said that Industry 4.0 had helped them to keep their operations running, and 56% said these technologies had been critical to their crisis responses.

If you haven’t adopted any Industry 4.0 technologies, you’re not alone. Many food and beverage companies have been slow to adopt aligning technologies, yet that’s no excuse to not get started. To stay competitive and meet the ever-intensifying needs of Industry 4.0, food and beverage companies must rise to the occasion and make a plan to become digitally connected.

As plant equipment and assets are crucial to the delivery of food and beverage products, this is a good place to start. If you can’t use your machines, delivering to customers becomes nearly impossible. Fixing assets when breakdowns occur has long been an industry standard. But fixing broken equipment, one emergency after another, is an inefficient use of resources and can even result in entire production lines shutting down.

To prevent breakdowns before they happen you can use affordable sensors to monitor equipment for early warning signs of performance deficiencies, downtime, or impending maintenance. Leveraging the IoT, data connectivity between these sensors and an enterprise asset management (EAM) system can activate early detection of deterioration symptoms. This may enable timely intervention before an issue causes major repercussions.

By collecting and analyzing asset data not only can you gain a deeper understanding of what the maturity of your assets means—but you can predict why an asset will fail or when. With this information, you can plan preventive maintenance schedules as well as create a maintenance program that will align with your company’s strategic goals.