Remote monitoring & maintenance, meet the challenge.

“We are going from the information age to the digital age where everything is connected”, Cisko’s former CEO John Chambers once said. An age where established companies must adapt and keep pace with digital disruptors, where innovation is everything. But, as I said in a former article about Business Model Innovation, many of the established companies have difficulties with innovation and the digital transformation. As a business, you have to find a new way to differentiate and to make sure customers have the best experience.

IoT is one of those strategies that businesses from diverse industries are applying. In the digital market, cloud-based remote monitoring and maintenance plays an enormous role. It enables not only the ability to monitor the functioning of your machinery, but also prevents breakdowns, costly fixes and creates service-level agreements.

Today’s wireless technologies are often not optimized for IoT applications that require low power. LoRaTM however, addresses the critical elements required for IoT networks that connect a great amount of devices: low power, long range and low cost. Connected devices at a low cost can be used to provide real-time data on the performance of assets. IoT has high standards and LoRa is one of the determining factors to speed up the developments of IoT.

The challenge: your machinery at maximum efficiency

Many industries face a range of challenges when it comes to making sure their equipment operates at maximum efficiency. The first challenge for businesses is the need to understand how their equipment is performing to optimize their use and to anticipate issues and failures. Remote monitoring along with predictive maintenance or analytics provides a solution to these challenges and is one of Smartlog’s activities.

Connecting machines enables real-time monitoring, so that engineers can remotely identify issues more quickly and reduce time to repair. Predictive maintenance therefore reduces maintenance-related costs. 3G gateways are often used to connect devices, which isn’t cost efficient at all. For this reason, Smartlog believes in bringing your data live without gateway. Not only maintenance-related costs are reduced, devices are also managed cost efficiently.

Connected products speed up the time to resolve product issues. Providing service engineers with accurate information speeds up the process of problem diagnosis. Linking sensor data and knowledge bases allows engineers to know what the problem is before they arrive at the location, making sure they arrive with the right tools to resolve issues in one visit.

Remote monitoring enables a ‘customer service experience’ transformation. Companies often maintain a reactive approach. Through remote monitoring, customer service can transform to a proactive approach. Instead of reacting to product issues, businesses can now start anticipating problems proactively.

Taking everything into consideration, remote monitoring goes further than detecting issues. It must be seen as a tool for gathering operational data, which can be used to discover valuable insights. These insights can then be employed in the service of new business models and customer services. The greatest advice from Smartlog to businesses is to embrace the process of digital business transformation and to gain competitive advantage, whether that is faster time to repair, reduced maintenance costs or innovative customer services. Key to this process is the integration of remote monitoring and maintenance.