Benefits of digitalization

Digitalizing your operations involves beginning to measure, monitor, and act on data to reduce consumption, lower energy costs, and minimize carbon emissions, among other benefits. The objective is to maximize efficiency and minimise energy usage across various systems, processes, or units. It involves finding the most optimal configuration, operation, or design that reduces energy waste while meeting performance or functionality requirements. Energy optimisation can be applied to a wide range of areas, including buildings, industrial processes, transportation, and power grids.

Today, everyone is seeking ways to reduce their energy consumption. Rising energy prices are one obvious reason, but other factors also come into play. These may include increased tariffs due to peak loads, costs related to unused energy, or penalties for reactive power. Additionally, environmental regulations and heightened regulatory requirements necessitate more efficient energy use.

In aggregate, this underscores the increasing importance of quickly analysing and precisely controlling energy consumption across all facets of operations, as well as the ability to manage and optimise it. A smart integrated energy management solution can easily save money and lead to improved outcomes. By applying energy optimisation techniques, organisations and individuals can reduce their energy consumption, decrease environmental impact, and achieve significant cost savings. Furthermore, energy optimisation plays a crucial role in addressing global energy challenges, promoting sustainability, and mitigating climate change.

Through the use of digitalization, we can help you meet the challenges of today's competitive global economy, characterised by high energy costs and increasing environmental regulations. Our platform enables real-time measurement, visualisation and identification of energy consumers. By planning and optimising your energy consumption, you can eliminate peak loads and avoid penalties on your tariff as you only pay for the energy you use. You can visualise and optimise energy costs for a product, while identifying and addressing equipment wear and tear. This in turn increases efficiency, reduces waste and lowers energy costs.
With our solutions, you can collect information and monitor both the total energy consumption at different points in production and the individual data of each unit such as frequency converters, servos and robots.

Digitizing your facility to optimise energy consumption need not be a massive and cumbersome project. With our platform, you can start on a small scale and expand gradually. Begin with local energy measurement at a point, such as a machine. The machine doesn't need to have internal sensors; our solution makes it easy to apply and connect an external energy meter that can monitor various parameters. Over time, you can then expand measurement points to more machines, robots, or sections of your processes. This allows you to collect, monitor, and analyse data from multiple sources through a unified interface. Through our software, you can understand, improve, and optimise energy usage patterns. You will have a platform that can easily scale up from a single machine to multiple production lines and sites.

Traceability involves the ability to trace or track an object, a process, or an event through various stages or periods of time. It enables the identification and retrieval of detailed information about a product, including:

• Components 
• Materials 
• Manufacturing processes 
• Quality control measures 
• Distribution channels

This information can be critical for various purposes, such as quality assurance, compliance with safety regulations, supply chain management, and product recalls.

Traceability systems facilitate better quality control by allowing you to trace and document the entire lifecycle of a product. This helps identify and isolate any defects or issues. It simplifies targeted recalls, investigations, and improvements in product safety and quality. Investing in traceability can also enhance customer satisfaction and brand reputation.

Traceability is crucial within logistics as well. It involves the ability to track a product from its origin, through manufacturing and distribution, until it reaches the customer. In the food industry, traceability is essential for ensuring food safety. You must be able to identify and recall products if a problem arises that could affect consumer health. In quality control and assurance, traceability is used to ensure that products or services meet specific standards and requirements.

Traceability also plays a vital role in optimising and monitoring operations. Traceability systems generate a wealth of data throughout a product's lifecycle. By analysing this data, you can gain valuable insights into your business, supply chain performance, customer behaviour, and market trends. Based on this, you can then enhance decision-making, processes, and innovation. This, in turn, can lead to increased operational efficiency and business growth.

By harnessing our digitalization platform in conjunction with our automation products, we can establish a scalable and flexible data structure, allowing you to customise and combine various products. You can begin with one or a few machines and effortlessly scale up without any upper limit. Through the system's facility history, you gain rapid and comprehensive access to traceability and data for analysis. Even with substantial volumes of incoming data, the system's high-performance data collection capacity can manage and store all data for extended periods to enhance security.

Furthermore, our digital platform, ICONICS, is fully compliant with FDA Title 21 CFR Part 11, ensuring compliance to FDA-endorsed electronic records and signatures.

By digitalizing your production facility, you can access data that enhances maintenance and reduces the risk of unexpected disruptions. Data-driven maintenance also enables a more predictive approach, thereby reducing the need for scheduled downtime.

Preventive maintenance involves a proactive approach to maintaining and servicing equipment, machinery, or systems to prevent breakdowns and extend their lifespan. It entails regular scheduled inspections and actions to identify and address potential issues in advance.

Predictive maintenance is an advanced maintenance strategy that utilises data and analysis to predict equipment failures. Its aim is to address potential problems before they lead to equipment breakdown or costly downtime.

The primary objective of preventive maintenance is to avoid unexpected downtime and minimise equipment failures. A preventive maintenance programme can save time, reduce costs, enhance safety, and ensure continuous operation. The drawback is that components are replaced based on a calculated technical lifespan, not on how worn they actually are.

By digitalizing machines and other equipment, you can analyse data from sensors, equipment monitoring systems, and historical maintenance records. Based on this data, you can make informed decisions and take action based on the anticipated status and performance of machines and components. This way, you can avoid sudden interruptions because you know in advance when a component is likely to start deteriorating. It also means you can avoid carrying out maintenance that isn't needed, reducing costs for spare parts and unnecessary downtime.

Implementing a predictive maintenance programme requires a combination of advanced technology, data analysis capabilities, and domain expertise. You should invest in data collection systems, sensor technologies, analysis tools, and necessary training to effectively implement predictive maintenance strategies. However, digitalizing your facility need not be a large and cumbersome project. With our platform, you can start on a small scale, for example, with a machine critical to your operations, and then scale up.

Over time, you can expand measurement points to more machines, robots, or process sections, thus collecting, monitoring, and analysing data from multiple sources. Through our software, you can understand, improve, and optimise maintenance and ultimately plan and implement a preventive maintenance programme. You will have a platform that can easily scale up from a single machine to multiple production lines and sites.