Visibility drives action. By leveraging real-time production monitoring powered by Allen-Bradley industrial control solutions, manufacturers gain timely insights into proactively improving operations versus reacting to issues after they surface.

This article explores how implementing Allen-Bradley by Rockwell Automation monitoring systems, from basic IIoT connectivity to advanced analytics and machine learning, can substantially boost efficiency, yield, and quality across industry verticals.

Current State Challenges

Many industrial plants still lack real-time visibility into critical production parameters impacting overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) like:

• Availability losses from excessive planned/unplanned downtime
• Performance losses like reduced line speeds
• Quality losses due to high scrap, rework, and stability issues

Instead, issues compound, resulting from reliance on lagging indicators like inconsistent historical data in spreadsheets. Lacking a contextual understanding of root causes hinders resolving production inefficiencies.

Transitioning to IIoT-based Monitoring

Thankfully, cost-effective IIoT technologies now enable accessing, standardizing, and contextualizing vastly increased machine data. Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley industrial control platforms, including PanelView HMIs, Drives, and Logix PLCs, provide state-of-the-art data accessibility natively versus complex retrofits.

When layered with data infrastructure to ingest, store, and structure information flows, even the most analog plants gain enhanced visibility via dashboards and SMS/email notifications revealing production patterns. Partners like Pacific Blue Engineering tailor connectivity for your specific Allen-Bradley architecture and business objectives.

Adding Visualization Capabilities

However, increased data access represents only the beginning. Without visualization capabilities contextualizing interdependencies between hundreds of production parameters, organizations still lack clear guidance to capitalize on IIoT-based monitoring.

Interactive web dashboards powered by FactoryTalk Innovation Suite and the Ignition platform visually transform obscure data points into dynamic overall equipment effectiveness metrics. Drilling into specific downtime events, changeovers, batches, or assets delivers microscope insights into identifying efficiency opportunities historically hidden by data deficits, even at the most granular level.

Prescriptive Analytics for Decision Support

Better decisions require better data. But even perfectly capturing and visualizing all critical production parameters lacks context for operational improvements. Prescriptive analytics takes IIoT monitoring to the next level.

By continually analyzing trends and patterns in machine metrics, prescriptive algorithms automate the identification of developing issues and opportunities. Alert notifications empower your team to get ahead of problems before they cascade while modeling future predictive scenarios to guide sustainability initiatives.

Safety and Risk Mitigation

With advanced visibility and insights into production, operations come with a greater responsibility to proactively intervene when signals point to emerging hazards or deviations from safe parameters. Thankfully, real-time monitoring powered by Allen-Bradley platforms builds the foundation for intelligent predictive responses to maximize uptime, quality, and safety simultaneously.

All Allen-Bradley PLCs and HMIs natively support robust safety protocols like safe torque off (STO) to gracefully disable equipment under specified conditions without process interruptions that degrade product stability. Pacific Blue Engineering consultants conduct detailed failure mode analyses during project design to fully leverage this capability when unexpected situations arise.

Configurable SMS text and email alert notifications empower your team with instant smartphone notifications tied to critical processes or safety-related anomalies. This might involve production stoppages, temperature excursions, improper machine states, or PPE detections, giving your staff ample time to validate and intervene before compounding issues.

Further, standardized dashboards tailored to your specific environment remain perpetually available, providing quick guidance for operators on proper responses without needing to remember complex SOPs or mitigation plans when stress levels run high due to abnormal situations. Drilling into individual assets grounds troubleshooting and root cause analysis so similar incidents do not repeat.

The key theme remains to leverage maximum information and context to best equip your personnel for safe conditions and optimal decision-making at every operational phase.

Ongoing Machine Learning

Sophisticated machine learning represents the new frontier for leveraging IIoT production data. ML algorithms built atop FactoryTalk and Azure ML use cloud computing scalability to continually measure hundreds of interactive variables, instantly update models, and recommend parameter adjustments for optimal throughput.

Over time, systems self-improve the identification of data correlations and forecasting for impressive results. Partners like Pacific Blue Engineering tailor ML solutions to leverage native Allen-Bradley analytics while aligning with your specific equipment goals. The future of smart manufacturing is here.

Transitioning to Real-Time Data Tracking

Transitioning manual data tracking methods to real-time Allen-Bradley monitoring delivers step-change improvements in manufacturing efficiency, quality, and profitability. Lacking solutions feasts on productivity.

Pacific Blue Engineering offers end-to-end visibility assessment, planning, design, integration, training, and support services, scaling from basic IIoT data connectivity to custom machine learning implementations.

Contact the experienced Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley systems integrators at Pacific Blue Engineering today at (657) 201-8603 or request a consultation online.