FEATURE Industry 4.0
It’s time to escape pilot purgatory
Data from the World Economic Forum revealed that, in 2019, 70% of projects didn’t make it past the pilot stage. How is it possible for over two thirds of projects to fail at the first hurdle? Johan Jonzon, CMO and co-founder of edge analytics firm Crosser, explains how manufacturers can prevent IoT project failure in the age of Industry 4.0
M
anufacturers all over the world are increasingly turning to new
technologies to make their
operations more effi cient. The latest tech development, cited by Gartner as a top innovation for 2021, is hyperautomation. Its concept is relatively simple – to automate as many processes across every layer of an organisation as possible. However, in practice, implementing a hyperautomation strategy can be challenging, with several possibilities to fall into so-called “pilot purgatory”.
Avoiding the challenges
Adopting digital solutions is nothing new for manufacturers – Industry 4.0 has been in full swing for nearly a decade. But with technologies constantly evolving, it can be diffi cult to keep pace and have confi dence that a digital transformation project will be successful. For a start, manufacturers automatically think that upgrading old legacy equipment is an essential fi rst step – yet this isn’t always the case. It is about fi nding a way to access and unify data produced across a facility to build a bigger picture.
Having a constant stream of data from a wide range of incompatible sources makes it diffi cult to align operations, leading to data silos, which can hinder productivity by preventing companies from seeing the scope of their operations. The information is there, but it’s not structured in a meaningful way. Data from every system, from the top
fl oor to the shop fl oor, is separate in this unfavourable scenario, leading to data silos, which are evaluated separately to determine the information’s relevance to a given project. This data then must be collated and analysed, which wastes time, money and resources, and risks workfl ow gaps and critical errors. Industry 4.0 is about collecting data from various systems, but storing and analysing it for company-wide accessibility without data silos is equally crucial. This is where the diffi culties lie, and why projects fail – Crosser’s own benchmark survey
20 December/January 2022 | Automation
revealed that 95% of respondents fi nd it challenging to create real-time workfl ows and automations between systems.
Inter-system intelligence To successfully escape pilot purgatory and reach project completion, manufacturers need to fi nd a way to integrate data gathered and stored by diff erent sources – old and new – into one accessible system. To support companies striving to buck
the trend of project failure, Crosser has developed the fi rst hyperautomation solution specifi cally designed for asset- rich and industrial companies. Crosser IPA – Intelligent Process Automation – empowers businesses to integrate and automate every single layer of their organisation and reach a hyperautomated state successfully. The solution supports over 700 systems and can integrate data from legacy systems, enterprise systems, cloud applications and machine data into one streamlined fl ow. Companies can also connect their enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and core automation systems to a smart factory analytics platform and gain centralised access to diff erent streams of data. What’s more, Crosser’s entire platform works on the philosophy of “low code” – its visual drag-and-drop studio means the software can be used by any developer, without a need for a dedicated team with extensive coding and developing experience, permitting even the smallest
of industrial companies to successfully hyperautomate. This is the approach that Clarebout Potatoes, frozen-potato products supplier, took when choosing to integrate Crosser’s edge analytics platform: “Crosser’s platform unlocks a far more granular way of managing data, as nodes are handled in smaller blocks. What’s more, because we were so reliant on coding and reprogramming each time we wanted to install a new process, we were constantly reinventing the wheel. With Crosser’s drag-and-drop function, we are adapting to a more streamlined way of data management.” Data from every corner of a business is available and understandable to all, in one seamless system, from the top fl oor to the shop fl oor. This empowers everyone in a company to benefi t from it, and enables hyperautomation projects to go from pilot to completion quickly – and, crucially, successfully.
For those wanting the cost and effi ciency
off ered by hyperautomation and to separate themselves from the project failure trend recognised by the World Economic Forum, removing data silos and uniting systems whilst maintaining organisation-wide accessibility is key to entering the hyperautomated era.
CONTACT:
Crosser Technologies
www.crosser.io
automationmagazine.co.uk
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