The Future Belongs to Those Who Use Data

There’s a wealth of information in the marketplace about IIoT and using data to make better decisions in manufacturing, and many shops are beginning to embrace these practices. One news item that recently caught my eye was an article on SmartIndustry.com summarizing information released by ABI Research in their Industrial and Manufacturing Semiannual Update. The report states that “Industrial firms will spend $19 billion on IIoT data analytics by 2026, up from $4.92 billion in 2020.” Clearly, the use of data is increasing rapidly, and this trend was accelerated by circumstances brought about by the pandemic.

Those Who Use Data Will Displace Those Who Don’t

In my experience, not only is the usage increasing, but more shops also are realizing that, in the future, those who use data will displace those who don’t. High-value contracts will be awarded to shops that have tightened up their process efficiency and quality control to a degree that only machine monitoring can enable. Armed with this knowledge, more shops are taking action to discover how to leverage data for themselves.

Choosing a Machine Monitoring System

Today there are many great systems available that provide machine monitoring tools, and three of them are Okuma Partners, including Predator, Freedom IOT and Praemo. Okuma’s Connect Plan is our IIoT software designed to easily collect machine tool data and present it in a very easy-to-understand format to optimize machining operations. All of these systems look at very similar things including machine status, spindle utilization, uptime, availability...and the list goes on. Where they sometimes differ is in the hardware, software and the way the data is displayed and stored, and there are pros and cons to consider for all these approaches. Whether you choose from these options, or others on the market, the fact remains – stepping up to machine monitoring gives you the ability to transform your business.

Watch the Video: Okuma’s Connect Plan

How Users are Currently Using Data

To get some ideas about how shops are benefitting from machine monitoring, we surveyed our customers who are using Connect Plan, and this provided some insights. Following are the activities users are prioritizing, in ranked order:

• Machine visualization
• Utilization tracking
• Analysis of processing results
• Access machine information from anywhere
• Preventive / predictive maintenance

Increased Process Efficiency

The activities listed above can contribute to substantial increases in process efficiency. As one example, our customer Dysinger Incorporated, in Dayton, Ohio, integrated their 11 Okuma machine tools to Connect Plan and improved spindle utilization by 15%.

Another customer used a machining process review to transform their old process, which required 8 machines to produce 76 parts per shift, to a new process using only 6 machines to produce an increased throughput of 96 parts per shift. Fewer machines plus higher throughput is a significant result that was only possible because machine monitoring helped them locate a bottleneck in their old process.

The Future Belongs to Those Who Use Data

As the legendary W. Edwards Deming once said, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” So, if you want to use data to make better decisions in manufacturing, you can do it the old-fashioned way, with a stopwatch and clipboard. Or you can use a modern-day approach like machine monitoring, that will give you information you can use to improve process efficiencies. In the long term, there really is no choice: the future belongs to those who use data.

About Jim Kosmala
Jim Kosmala is Vice President of Engineering and Technology, Okuma America Corporation.
Connect with Jim on LinkedIn.