In a time of turmoil, the low-cost producer will be the long-term winner, and asset intelligence powered by the digital revolution can mean the difference between thriving, surviving, or floundering. Where digital is in demand, so is connectivity.
One requirement is for backhaul to the rest of the world from remote sites. Depending on the location, that may be provided by cellular, microwave, fiber or satellite or several technologies in combination, supporting different applications and backing each other up in case of failure. All this is complex enough to integrate and manage. Speedcast’s solution is a converged Internet Protocol architecture that optimized performance and ensures interoperability of communication services. All communications between disparate systems or between onsite and offsite locations is ultimately turned into IP traffic routed over the local LAN, with its routers, switches, accelerators and firewalls.
In a typical installation, we architect the overall system, integrate the equipment onsite and provide terminals, radio masts and towers, antenna/RF systems, as well as push-to-talk radios, phones and laptops ruggedized for upstream operation.
The Leading companies want to connect and integrate the specialist software products and business workflows across operations, maintenance, condition assessment, integrity management, staff training, data analysis and visualization. They want it to add up to more than asset management – they want asset intelligence. Asset intelligence is complicated and implementing it could be a nightmare.
Based on Speedcast’s experience, there are three essentials to help customers achieve the results they require:
First, conduct a gap analysis between the existing sensors and systems in the field, the enterprise IT systems and established business processes and the decision-support capabilities the company needs.
Secondly, think dashboards, interpret and present data to management. This will become increasingly critical as IoT technologies cause the flow of data to become a flood of information.
Third, rather than investing in huge, new systems, build a light framework over the top of existing platforms that provide:
- Reliability analysis based on all the lifetime data in asset integrity, maintenance management and other related systems.
- Predictive analytics to support informed, evidence-based decision-making.
- A data visualization dashboard to present benchmarking and performance against chosen metrics across all assets
- A task-based graphical user interface that shows a continuously updated and re-prioritized set of tasks.