Internet of Things (IOT)/ Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) in Manufacturing
IOT (Internet of Things) or IIOT (Industrial Internet of Things) has been the latest technology that brings the manufacturing industry to industry 4.0. We collect different kinds of process information from the ISA 95 model (Level 0, 1, 2) automation layers: PLCs, sensors, etc., All this information is being stored into multiple data sources such as historians and has been used only to ensure that the processes are executed as per the standard operating procedures.
We have not been generating much insights from the historical information. There are some alerts that are being generated for the processes that go out-of-bounds and these alerts are not integrated into the overall manufacturing context. Anomalies such as environmental monitoring of a pharmaceutical industry would need human intervention for the corrective actions. With the help of IIOT in the manufacturing industry, snapshot of the anomalies generated at different parts of the enterprise and actions that corrected the anomalies is plugged into the whole context in real-time and improves the productivity and compliance.
Lately some companies have come up with predictive maintenance algorithms by monitoring the equipment continuously and striking a balance between optimum downtime and higher availability of the machines. For example, SAP predictive analytics for maintenance has leveraged the Predictive analytics and SAP HANA capabilities (https://www.sap.com/pc/tech/internet-of-things/software/predictive-maintenance/index.html) .
With IOT and predictive analytics, we can increase the production up-time by moving from preventative maintenance to predictive maintenance.
Atachi has an IOT alliance with Kepware (https://www.kepware.com/) to bring the best of the IOT solutions to the Pharmaceutical, Medical Devices and Diagnostics and Food and Beverage manufacturing industries. Atachi NGIMES with the help of Kepware IOT Gateway brings the insights from all the shop floor data generated with the PLCs.
Atachi partners with Monnit wireless sensors (https://www.monnit.com/) company that manufactures wireless sensors for industry.
IOT for pharma can bring significant advantages to the pharmaceutical manufacturers and any manufacturing industry. For the FDA regulated industries such as: pharmaceutical, medical devices and diagnostics, IOT gives extra compliance with the real-time added benefits (integrating the environment, laboratory instruments, etc.).
