An Incremental Approach To Machine Learning For Asset Maintenance

If you are reading an article in Manufacturing Business Technology, then there is a good chance that your strategic roadmap includes machine learning for asset maintenance. There is a consensus that machine learning can unlock significant value for manufacturers, by providing plant owners with real-time analysis of an asset's current performance and the likelihood of degradation and failure. The challenge for many plant owners is that there is a severe disconnect between the sales collateral of technology vendors and the practicalities of implementing machine learning. For this article, we can put aside system and infrastructure cost because with burgeoning competition the basic rules of economics suggest that machine learning pricing will become more affordable over time. A second issue that has been an inhibitor of machine learning has been access to a factory's historian database.