Factory asset management systems
Emergence of Industry 4.0 and smart factories have made it a necessity for manufacturing industries to adopt modern practices to optimise their production processes. Valuable asset tracking and monitoring wireless technology are being adopted by leading industries for asset intelligence – tracking and monitoring of critical assets, their location and working environment.
These wireless monitoring technologies can also be classified under factory asset management systems in which industries leverage such sensor technologies to prevent equipment failure and to significantly improve asset performance and extend their life. This digital transformation technology is playing an important role in many mainstream industries such as as logistics, warehousing, healthcare, fleet management, shipping, and factory automation.
“Wireless (Active RFid tag) temperature sensing of a 33 KV high voltage transformer. Thrilled to see the performance and the immense opportunity it opens for asset tracking & condition monitoring of critical assets like transformers and electrical panels,” says Mr. Balasubramaniam Somasundaram, plant Engineering & Maintenance, ZF Windpower
With manufacturing industries aiming to adopt Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing, product-life cycle management, efficient production process control, supply chain visibility, and just in time logistics have increasingly become a necessity.
Owing to this platonic shift, high value asset tracking solutions are being adopted by leading corporations practicing Industry 4.0, and are anticipated to greatly impact the growth of various industries in the coming years.
This disruptive technology allows manufacturers to track a high value asset through the entire stage of production, their real-time location and status, and generate various reports which help them to monitor and take important actions accordingly.
Technology Adoption in valuable asset tracking
These unique wireless asset tracking solutions also helps in monitoring real time data regarding plant & machinery and equipment to plan maintenance activities and reduce preventive maintenance costs, besides. Industries involved in warehousing, distribution & supply chain logistics, who are the main adopters of cold chain / asset tracking solutions, are able to track truck location, movement, tilt, temperature, shock & environment condition. These key forces pave the way for the adoption of wireless asset tracking technologies in smart factories and warehouses.
Currently, wireless asset tracking technologies are in perpectual developmental stage and undergoing enhancements due to the emergence of 5G, Sigfox, LoRa, Narrow Band IOT (NbIOT) etc that are telecom industry driven disruptions.
The asset tracking technoliges need to balance between ease of deployment, battery autonomy, transmission range, device size, wireless protocol, security and safety norms.
Some industries use active RFid, the highly proven, widely deployed technology for asset tracking, equipment monitoring, and physically securing high value assets. Ripples IoT provides best in class, tamper proof, miniature sensor devices, dashboard software and data visualisation tools for valuable asset tracking.