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Creating the digital future in brownfield plants

How a technique from the 1970s can be used to leverage well-recognized measurements such as operational equipment effectiveness and total productive maintenance to transform brownfield plants into digital ones.

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The biggest hurdle for most manufacturing and processing facilities isn’t accepting the idea that connected devices and systems can improve operations and business performance. It’s the question of how to implement the necessary technologies and procedures within an existing facility populated with systems that pre-date the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 concepts.

To help companies better understand how to facilitate this change within their existing plants, Spencer Cramer, CEO, ei3 Corp. (a provider of IoT platform technology) and John Kowal, director, business development, B&R Industrial Automation (an automation hardware and software supplier) have authored a white paper for the Industrial Internet Consortium that explains how a concept from the 1970s, known as The Focused Factory, can be successfully applied today to create an IIoT “green patch” in a brownfield plant.

The Focused Factory concept revolves around the idea of creating a factory within a factory. It is a greenfield operation comprised of full-scale manufacturing systems, lines, and/or cells that are intended to be used in production indefinitely. The equipment, tooling and operational and information technologies in this Focused Factory should be new, up-to-date technology. Cramer and Kowal note that with a well-defined scope, this project becomes “a manageable, measurable proof-of-concept project that pays for itself before scaling up.”

Though it may sound like a pilot project, that title does not fully describe the Focused Factory. In their white paper, Cramer and Kowal list several criteria for creating an IoT green patch project that helps explain why the Focused Factory is more than a pilot. That list notes that the Focused Factory should:

INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for Food Products at PACK EXPO Southeast
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INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for Food Products at PACK EXPO Southeast