New Service Offerings Emerging for Industrial OEMs: Cloud-based Remote Monitoring and Mobility

The cloud is creating new revenue opportunities for equipment OEMs in the industrial market, as they are being pressed to deliver new and higher levels of services to their customers without increasing their costs. An opportunity to create these new service offerings has materialized through the realization of the promise of the Industrial Internet – or Internet of Things – which helps manufacturers connect their intelligent machines to gather data and insights that can empower operators and business managers to make smarter, more informed decisions that can save time and money. Taking advantage of secure cloud services, which reduce initial investment costs for OEMs, has provided a jump start for many of them to realize this opportunity.

In the case of TempuTech, for example, an OEM of grain processing equipment for manufacturing, incorporating a cloud-based remote monitoring and mobility solution from GE Intelligent Platforms in its grain processors has given them a new revenue stream as they are now able to provide customers with asset monitoring capabilities through a subscription-based cloud service. The cloud-based solution quickly and cost-effectively transforms raw data into actionable information, maximizing operational efficiency, productivity and profitability. Being able to view alarms and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) data on a single screen on a mobile device and having a customized risk index for advanced analytics and predictive detection allows OEMs to contact customers before their process goes down. And further, being able to use fewer experts to monitor and troubleshoot an entire fleet of assets contributes to cost reduction.

This on-premise or private cloud is combined with a rugged Machine Data Gateway to collect equipment data from nearly any brand of intelligent control device, which is then buffered to protect against network outages, encrypted and transmitted to and verified by the remote monitoring and mobility server.

The speed of deployment using the cloud service allows for quick ROI for the OEM, as new revenue-generating services offset monthly fees. In this case, grain manufacturer customers can benefit quickly as TempuTech’s new service is able to access and provide actionable information about the health of the customers’ grain processing system and deliver it to them in real-time so they can avoid downtime and quality issues. This ability to leverage the cloud to provide virtualized centralization of unlike applications, devices and sensors via a web-based remote monitoring and diagnostic system is improving customer service for the OEM, enhancing their value to the customers while reducing the overall cost of customer service.

Steve Pavlosky from GE Intelligent Platforms can describe how the cloud and the advances of the Industrial Internet are sparking these new revenue opportunities for OEMs in industrial and manufacturing operations.