Improve Operations and Maintenance Processes with IoT

Last week we covered a general overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) and how it can influence and benefit your facilities. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll take a deeper dive into the each of the benefits and give you thought-provoking ideas and information on the different ways your business can benefit from IoT.

The recent events in Texas bring to light the importance of maintenance. While the arctic freeze of Winter Storm URI that shut down Texas was longer and stronger than utility companies had forecasted, it was ultimately a failure to correctly winterize machinery that caused much of the chaos and lead to millions of Texans without power, heat and water.

While the Texas power outage is an extreme case, with IoT systems you can improve things like equipment and machinery maintenance, prioritization of essential maintenance to ensure equipment receives the regular maintenance that it needs, and much more.

IoT for Operations and Maintenance

There are a lot of different areas of any business that can benefit from IoT, including operations and maintenance. It’s not easy, especially in a large organization, to continuously track what equipment needs maintenance and when it needs it. Taking advantage of the IoT can help to ensure that small mistakes don’t turn into costly mistakes.

Equipment Monitoring Devices

Throughout the facility, monitoring devices can be installed on devices or machinery to monitor their status and ensure that they’re working correctly, not overheating or malfunctioning in any way. It also allows you to unify procedures across all your facility locations because small problems can become big problems if you don’t take care of them quickly.

Whether you are operating multiple facilities, with thousands of machines throughout the county or world, or even just one machine, you’ll be able to instantly recognize when something isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. You can preset temperature benchmarks or operational benchmarks, which will quickly alert you to any trouble or if equipment and machinery aren’t performing at 100%.

Detailed Record Keeping

Record keeping is an important yet often overlooked part of facility management. Without proper record keeping, small things can easily be missed or forgotten. IoT allows for all record-keeping being kept in one central location, and alerts can be set up, so no essential maintenance, services, or peak times are missed.

Sensors

Whenever you rely on people to input data and monitor data manually, there is always room for errors and mistakes. It’s easy for small things to be missed and little things to become big things in only seconds. Sensors can be put on machinery and equipment which will instantly notify the relevant people through text messages, alerts or phone calls. Sensors can be put in place throughout multiple facilities, which will assist with control and monitoring different building system processes through preinstalled algorithms and setpoints.

When using the Internet of Things (IoT), data can be transferred and collected over a wireless network without the intervention of humans. It improves awareness, uniformity and response time. There are thousands of different ways that IoT can benefit your business, operations and maintenance is only one, but it may be where you have one of the biggest returns for your investment.

Flagship Facility Services are experts in incorporating IoT into your facility management and maintenance services. We have experienced and professional teams ready to help your business with your IoT requirements and your integrated facilities management needs.