Huge shout out to
Read the story of Perth County Ingredients, a food processor that integrated its PLCs with Fiix in two weeks and used this integration to save $40,000 in nine months. If you want to read the full case study check it out here.
But first, what does it mean to integrate with operational technology (OT)?
- How it works
- Getting equipment data from a PLC, MES or another OT system into Fiix is hard to do manually. But, the good news is, there’s software that eliminates manual data collection. This software receives information from your OT systems and automatically sends it to Fiix. The connection between the three systems is an integration.
- What happens to the data in Fiix?
- Once equipment data is flowing to Fiix, it can be used to automatically create and schedule work orders based on your pre-set triggers. For example, if a machine runs for a certain number of hours or vibration on a component rises past a certain level, you can set up a work order trigger to inspect that machine.
- What’s the impact of integration?
- After integrating your OT with Fiix, you’ll have all the data you need to move from time- based preventive work to condition-based and predictive scheduling. And Fiix’s network of trusted software partners makes it easier than ever to integrate and continue to optimize your maintenance program.
Perth County Ingredient’s journey to an optimized maintenance schedule.
The problem: the maintenance team at Perth County Ingredients (PCI) was spending hours every week manually inspecting equipment and logging data for tasks that weren’t necessary. These tasks were eating into the team’s schedule and budget while having minimal impact on the health and performance of equipment.
The solution: with the help of Fiix’s integration partner Majik Systems, PCI set up an integration between its existing PLCs and Fiix. This allowed them to collect real-time meter readers with the PLCs and send this data to Fiix. Once in Fiix, the data was used to automatically create and schedule work orders when a meter reading hit certain thresholds set up by the company’s maintenance team. This reduced manual tasks and unnecessary tasks while improving data accuracy.
The process: PCI’s integration project began with a scoping call with Fiix, where goals and requirements were discussed. Using these targets, Fiix helped connect the company with the integration partner that best fit the project (Majik). Majik worked with PCI to create a plan for data collection and maintenance triggers. Majik then set up the integration between the PLCs and Fiix in only two weeks without stepping inside a PCI facility and without more than a day of work for the maintenance team.
The benefits: PCI saw a 300% return on the integration project in just nine months. The maintenance team stopped doing manual inspections of equipment after going live and was able to react to changes in equipment condition faster. These efforts helped reduce reactive maintenance by 54% and cut costs by $40,000.
