IOT solutions for industrial production optimisation

Exploiting the potential of IoT solutions is not just about connecting production machines to the network. Above all, it is about ensuring that the data generated by machines themselves interact with the company’s systems and applications. This is the only way to optimize business processes and increase production efficiency.

Utopian scenarios are no longer the case: there are several winning examples of digital transformation projects in which IoT technology has proven to be a real business enabler. These are projects that rightly fall under the definition of Industry 4.0 and define what is described as Industrial IoT (IIoT).

For this market, Lutech worked on an IoT project for a leading manufacturer of DC motors, gear motors, traction systems and goods handling systems.

The client’s requirements were clear: to tackle increasingly aggressive competitive scenarios and tighter delivery times, and to define a more versatile production closer to the customer’s needs.

More precisely, the project goals were to adapt to well-defined KPIs and to set in place precise analysis procedures. It would then be necessary to ensure the simplification and speeding up of the advanced analysis process, facilitating the interpretation of information and, finally, the customer opted for centralized monitoring of the data collected from different resources.

“A good Industrial IoT solution must ensure integration between devices, applications and processes, machine learning tools and a unified management console”

Lutech therefore designed and implemented an automatic process to collect maintenance and operational information in a single repository and generate actionable instructions for production processes.

Right after the first tests, the client recorded significant and immediate results in terms of the planning process, which used to be based on analysis after the fact.

The solution identified by Lutech was PTC ThingWorx, supported by the necessary application integration services specifically developed by Lutech’s development team.

PTC ThingWorx is an award-winning solution designed specifically for industrial environments. The solution helps companies make a real operational transformation through rapid implementation of the IoT technology.

It is a complete end-to-end technology, providing the features and flexibility required to develop and release IoT solutions with possible extensions in the field of Augmented Reality (AR) through the PTC Vuforia environment.

The platform contains a vast set of features, including several connectivity options, application development tools, and analytics tools. All in one environment, the ThingModel.

PTC ThingWorx connects thousands of devices, applications and cloud services, providing a single automated source of industrial data to multiple business applications.

The solution proposed by Lutech is the right answer to the needs of the industrial market, where the availability of real-time information is now a standard. The management of information, and the consequent possibility of extracting insights from it, makes it possible to adapt to the challenges of the industrial production sector. In particular, PTC ThingWorx applies machine learning technologies to provide increasingly accurate and easy to interpret Industrial IoT analysis.

After Lutech’s successful implementation of the PTC ThingWorx solution, the client immediately recorded the following benefits for its industrial processes:

• Adequate realtime monitoring of performance and implementation of automatic learning for fault detection.
• Ability to monitor equipment and machinery in real time for preventive maintenance on site and repair of operational resources.
• Implementation of realtime alerts and instructions for operating personnel.
• Data gathering and management from multiple systems and resources on a single dashboard.
• Connection different heterogeneous data sources (IoT devices, applications and processes), with real-time performance monitoring.

Finally, the choice of the PTC ThingWorx solution enables a new experience and interaction between physical objects within a unique and easily manageable environment. With this platform, Lutech has enabled the client to accelerate time to value and record an immediate return on investment (ROI) for its Industrial IoT solution.