Investing in predictive maintenance can help with software-defined future, supplier claims

SEW-Eurodrive has helped its customers migrate away from reactive maintenance models to condition-monitoring built on real-time data, it says, and focus on improving flexibility.

According to the company, while manufacturers tend to talk up digital transformation, many remain constrained by hardware-defined systems that limit flexibility and slow progress. “When supply chains are disrupted or production demands increase, these rigid architectures can’t adapt fast enough,” says condition monitoring specialist James Scott.

As well as a standalone efficiency tool, he explains, predictive maintenance can help manufacturers to effectively build the digital backbone for their future factories, with connected systems and data-driven decision-making.

“We’ve helped customers to implement condition-monitoring, moving from a ‘fix it when it breaks’ model to using real-time data to determine when action is needed,” says Scott.

He cites a trial at a major UK luxury car manufacturer’s paint shop. “We monitored six drives across three spray booth conveyors and spotted patterns in the data. One conveyor consistently required more current to run, indicating paint build-up. Left unchecked, this could have increased energy use and caused costly mechanical failure.”

SEW-Eurodrive believes that, in many cases, what holds manufacturers back is not the cost or the technology but worries about data security.

“We’ve seen trials stall because companies worry about cloud data transfer, even though the data we collect is non-critical and can’t affect drive control,” says Scott. “To address this, we’re developing edge processing units: local dashboards that let all analytics happen on-site without sending anything off-site.”

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www.sew-eurodrive.co.uk