How AI at the Edge, IoT Generate Enterprise-Wide Savings

As manufacturers seek to streamline their businesses, they want to gain more insight into the health of their equipment, with the goals of keeping it running smoothly, ensuring optimal performance, and reducing unexpected downtime. Automation has long been used ito help achieve these goals, and in recent years, advances in key technologies--including artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT)--have allowed manufacturers to take advantage of more sophisticated industrial use cases for automation, such as bin picking, and collaborative and autonomous mobile robots. Today, new types of assets are taking automation even further, as machines such as robotic welding arms and injection molding machines use hundreds of sensors that combine with existing data sources to improve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). In the case of a robotic arm, for example, the machine data spans a large number of sensor and actuator measurements from the robotic arm itself, and external sources that indicate other operational and environmental conditions (e.g., line speed, job style, ambient temperature and humidity). The process of joining these technologies with AI-based IoT technologies is playing an increasingly important role in delivering tangible business value throughout the manufacturing environment.