Industrial Smart Facility Management
What is Smart Facility?
Smart Facilities Management (FM) is the integration of systems, processes, technology, and personnel to improve building facility management. It is about doing better with new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, cloud-based systems, and advanced computerised maintenance management systems; it is about bringing multiple disciplines together to ensure the functionality, comfort, safety, and efficiency of the built environment system.
This blend of physical, for example, office facilities and digital infrastructure requirements is what FM is all about. It offers fascinating possibilities when applied to various FM processes such as security, access control, fire prevention, HVAC, lighting, comfort control, indoor air quality, energy management, cleaning and disinfection, preventative maintenance, physical upkeep, waste management, and much more.
Role of AI & IoT in Facility Management/Monitoring
The industry necessitates the incorporation of appropriate tools and technology in order for facilities to achieve maximum efficiency, with an emphasis on hygiene and health protection through contactless and automated processes. A unified IoT platform driven by AI and machine learning may give actionable insights about facility deficiencies. AI and IoT-powered technologies may be integrated into smart industries/factories to collect and analyse data in order to provide insights to help manage a facility. Building and physical asset data may be analysed using AI and ML approaches. These technologies provide facility managers with a much more comprehensive method of monitoring and fine-tuning the whole building and asset system.
A Smart Monitoring Solution is an all-inclusive software service that enables organisations and industries to achieve significant improvements in energy efficiency usage while decreasing conservation impacts, dipping consumptions, and operating expenditures. The system, which includes IoT sensors that collect data in real time, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI), can identify significant energy-saving opportunities. It even significantly reduces energy consumption.
Benefits of smart facility management
Environmental benefits
AI and IoT can assist a facility manager in understanding and controlling the environmental issues associated with building management. Since AI is self-aware, it may predict issues before they arise and, in some circumstances, automatically inform the appropriate people and equipment to take action.
Improved analytics
AI is simple to integrate into any IoT-enabled system. This enables advanced data analytics on the Cloud, offering insights into previously undiscovered data trends and perhaps leading to cost savings.
Alarm and notification
Send facility management and repair professionals comprehensive alarm reports and correction instructions.
Remote operation
Remote control of site equipment minimizes the requirement for site visits and enhances the uptime of assets.
Risk identification
AI and IoT can help to identify hazards that might lead to health issues such as allergies or worse for the comfort of building inhabitants and employees. Automated detection and alerting systems can aid in the prevention of problems, and data analysis can aid in the identification of problems before they occur.
Predictive maintenance
AI and IoT may assist with planning for predictive maintenance by process modification from previous data and monitoring assets in real-time, lowering total facility maintenance expenses. AI may also assist in the segregation of capital and functional expenditures for analysis and reporting.
Facility Management Challenges and how it works in Industrial Automation
The manufacturing industry has been facing several challenges, such as controlling costs, maintaining ageing equipment, addressing equipment failures, keeping exact records, ensuring facility and data security, incorporating sustainability and production performance, and limiting environmental impacts. These difficulties arise from a variety of causes, including changes in the global industrial environment and the delayed adoption of smart manufacturing through the production process.
The challenge in industry is to enable real-time monitoring of production lines that support a paperless reporting approach due to closely connected machinery, personnel, and processes. A factory supervisor can monitor all of the machines on a line or throughout the plant to identify equipment availability, workload, downtime, performance, and a variety of other critical data that might impact production efficiency. Furthermore, data gathered from equipment on a variety of production lines is continually watched and analysed in order to identify trends and discover abnormalities, allowing operators to rearrange scheduled activities and minimise sudden downtime.
Despite having an automated production environment, most businesses fail to enhance manufacturing productivity. To overcome the following challenge, Industrial IoT connects and exchanges data across machines, equipment, systems, and personnel, enabling industrial firms to combine plant operations and reach better levels of efficiency. Data collected from equipment and processes is reviewed to inform choices regarding safety, quality, and operations, rather than automation. The automated factory is turned into an IoT-enabled smart factory by connecting machinery and equipment to capture data and retrieve useful information and connecting it to the cloud with a comprehensive IoT solution.
The IoT-powered production line monitoring system enables manufacturers to connect machines across multiple production lines, collect data from multiple sources, and build features such as remote monitoring and predictive analytics. Floor supervisors can monitor production line performance from a centralised, interactive dashboard with this flexible and user-friendly industrial automation system. It enables industries to make more informed decisions in order to enhance efficiency and profit.
Smart Facility Management Use Cases
Alert for fire and smoke
The system's alerts are organized into categories based on priority and requirement such as Emergency alert, High alert, Deadline alert and Routine alert. The maintaining and monitoring of these alerts and fire safety equipment can take a significant amount of time. IoT-enabled sensors can assist in automating maintenance and ensuring an appropriate response to emergency circumstances. Sensitive IoT fire and smoke sensors can alert employees at the earliest stages of a problem, allowing a minor issue to be resolved before it becomes a severe one. Passers-by may notice the fire and smoke sensors that raise a local alarm, but IoT-enabled sensors may send real-time warnings to facility management and even emergency service employees, allowing the problem to be handled quickly.
Factory Management
Keeping track of production on the factory floor and evaluating production performance are Smart production line monitoring systems driven by AI and IoT technologies, allowing you to monitor everything on the shop floor from a centralised, live dashboard. Highly trained machine learning algorithms are used in industrial automation solutions to forecast machine faults and provide greater operational intelligence than legacy systems we are able to provide. Manufacturers may use an Industry IoT solution to link numerous production lines and machines, collect data at various stages of production from different sources, and build features such as remote monitoring, edge analytics, predictive maintenance, and digital twin.
Asset Monitoring
Helps in making the most of ageing assets and reducing asset lifetime expenses, also assists with the monitoring of virtual assets such as data from various business platforms. Predictive analytics skills result in lower technology costs and increased business process efficiency. IoT not only allows you to have better control over your equipment and machines, but it also has a beneficial influence on factors such as boosting efficiency and production, lowering operating costs, improving customer experiences, and so on.
Building Management
Businesses that do not have IoT in place are still unable to autonomously monitor their building's systems in real time. This raises the expenses of increased manual inspection and maintenance, as well as the chances of unanticipated equipment failures. However, a sophisticated IoT-based BMS (Building Management System) that integrates new sensors with legacy systems can save building management expenses.
Newark has partnered with many different suppliers catering to a wide range of smart facility management applications, products, and solutions portfolios, such as Automation & Process Control, Gateways, Process Controllers, Programmers & Indicators, PLC Programmers, Temperature Controllers, Thermostats, RFID Accessories, Sensors, IoT Solutions Kits, Programmable Logic Controllers - PLCs, Industrial Computing, Human Machine Interface - HMI, Beacon / Sounders are available to execute design, development, and projects.
