From keeping supermarket fridges and freezers in optimum working order to improving the quality and safety of the food we buy, data-enabled automation of critical infrastructure has been improving retail experience for years. How exactly? Well, it’s not as simple as it sounds.
The Bigger Picture
Automation strategies are enabled through best-in-class IoT technology with the capability to integrate to machines and gather the large amounts of data often trapped within a retailer’s equipment. Once gathered, these advanced solutions can make sense of this data in real-time. Machine health and performance can be understood and further contextualised against historical data, commissioning protocols and third-party applications – such as work order systems.
This is no mean feat in a sector built upon complex and disparate infrastructure. Agnostic solutions that enable connectivity to any asset, regardless of type, manufacturer or age, are providing the platform for change and enabling food retailers to unlock visibility and control over existing infrastructure to begin informed shifts in their approach to maintenance.
By releasing unprecedented levels of visibility, alongside third-party integration and deep contextualisation, smart automation strategies can be applied across processes, operations and machines to drive maximum efficiency and effectiveness. In maintenance, this new approach has a twofold effect; reducing the overall requirement for maintenance callouts, and optimising the overall effectiveness of the maintenance that is required.
Reducing the Requirement
Perhaps the most powerful benefit to maintenance comes from the ability to automatically optimise the performance of critical machines. By ensuring equipment is consistently running at optimum levels, the longevity of an asset can be prolonged, and the risk of failure or requirement for repair reduced. For example, a refrigerators mechanical elements can be monitored constantly to ensure continual machine health and performance.
Adjustments and alignments can then be enacted automatically by the system in real-time to ensure a continuously optimised machine, without the requirement for human intervention. Automated ‘recall’ strategies are also being leveraged across the industry to drive down unnecessary maintenance. The system automatically identifies when issues are recurring or related and will nest them under one job. This provides the assigned engineer with a full, contextualised picture of the faults occurring in order to enable the best chance for root cause identification and resolution.
Optimising Engineering
Arming the engineers with more information also plays a key role in driving improved maintenance effectiveness. Prior to IoT technology adoption, engineers would visit a site with limited insights into the health and behaviour of machines, both on a granular and estate-wide level. Now however, asset insights can be automatically collated, translated and provided to the assigned engineer once a fault has been detected. This provides a real-time, digitalised view of the machine, as well as asset history, which allows for intermittent issues, new faults, parts required or fixes necessary to be easily identified without multiple call-outs or delays.
Additionally, the assignment of engineers to jobs can be automated, and by leveraging data such as skillset, parts and tools available and engineer location, maintenance teams can further streamline operations and ensure a first-time-fix.
Solutions are also able to automatically assign assets that are alerting with signs of failure with predefined severity levels. This ensures that the most harmful issues are addressed first by engineering teams and can protect from damaged equipment, wasted energy from under performing assets or even loss of stock.
By utilising this newly obtained and contextualised data, retailers and engineers have access to estate-wide asset-level insights. Replacing inefficient processes, streamlining workflows and enabling an informed workforce are just some of the ways automation is increasing efficiency and changing retail maintenance for the better.
Written By Lee Harpham, Refrigeration & Energy Solutions Manager at IMS Evolve
For more information visit:
www.ims-evolve.com
