Quick hits:
- See the top 5 technology areas targeted for the most investment across discrete manufacturing, batch manufacturing, and continuous processing.
- How remote access technology helps increase worker safety and operations efficiency.
- Learn about developing business trends influencing the use of remote access and monitoring applications.
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| Read the transcript below: |
I’m David Greenfield, Director of Content at Automation World and thanks for joining me for this Take Five with Automation World episode where I’ll be explaining why remote access technology is so popular in the process industries.
Now, I should begin by noting that we first noticed the popularity of remote access in the processing industries, as compared to the discrete manufacturing industries, while conducting research into automation technology spending trends for 2021. Two articles we’ve published so far from this research look at trends for the discrete and batch manufacturing industries. The report on our findings for the continuous process industries will be featured in our August 2021 issue and online as well. I should also note here that PMMI has created a report on adoption of remote access technologies among CPG manufacturers and the OEMs that serve this market.
So, while reviewing the results from the Automation World research, we noticed that remote access technologies ranked among the top five for expected spending in the continuous processing industries. But it didn’t rank that highly for discrete manufacturers.
Considering that a number of the same technologies ranked in the top 5 across all verticals…for example, data acquisition and analytics, cybersecurity software, and IoT platform software, we were curious as to why remote access would rank so highly among continuous processors compared to the discrete manufacturing industries.
Josh Eastburn, director of technical marketing at Opto 22, suggests the reason for this is largely due to continuous process operations often being in hazardous, restricted, or remote areas. He pointed to the petrochemical industry as a perfect example of this.
And Jesse Hill, process industry manager at Beckhoff Automation, said, “In upstream and midstream oil-and-gas applications, the control systems are often in remote locations that are difficult to access. And this can also be the case in downstream oil and gas and other large processing plants. So, even though the location of the assets may be within the confines of the plant itself, the system that needs monitoring and access may be hundreds of meters or even miles away.”
Michael Risse, vice president and chief marketing officer at Seeq, pointed out that production assets in continuous processing tend to lend themselves to constant monitoring more so than in discrete industries. He explained that: time series data—the basis for monitoring—is often limited to short bursts, such as a weld, a dip tank, or a seal in discrete manufacturing because operations there are more about assembly than long-running processes. This scenario changes, of course, when a discrete manufacturer puts sensors on a device. At that point, telemetry from the sensors is 100% time series data.
Now, despite the differences in remote monitoring use between discrete manufacturers and continuous processors, discrete manufacturing plants still have a need for remote access and monitoring. Aaron Crews, director for modernization solutions and consulting at Emerson said: increased use of remote access in …….