smart plastics
In the current climate, every minute often counts in production plants. Efficient, intelligent maintenance protects against expensive production downtimes and unplanned shutdowns. The service life of our igus® products can be calculated online. What's more: With smart plastics, the components report at an early stage when they are due for replacement. In this article I would like to show you how we have successfully introduced smart maintenance to our customers.
For machine data evaluation in the smart factory, FANUC offers the "FIELD system" industrial IoT platform. igus is also involved with its i.Cee app for predictive maintenance.
Anyone who can make reliable, useful maintenance predictions is one step ahead of the competition. In the age of digitalisation, more than Big Data is required for such predictions. To derive correct maintenance scheduling recommendations from the sensor data, we therefore compare them with long-term empirical values from the igus® test database.
In automotive production, the line never stops. On average, an engine comes off the assembly line every 14 seconds. To avoid unplanned downtime and system breakdowns, many German and international automotive factories are already using modern maintenance concepts with predictive maintenance.
Because technologies supported by the Industrial Internet of Things are enjoying greater acceptance in factory environments, even more components with integrated intelligence are being produced. This is leading to the emergence of a new generation of smart plastics capable of constantly monitoring themselves and providing performance data and early warning of critical wear. These smart plastics can be used to increase plant productivity, maximise service life, and reduce costs thanks to condition monitoring and predictive maintenance.