Unexpected downtime costs industries billions of dollars each year, and the challenges of aging assets combined with many experienced professionals at or near retirement age have companies looking at the promises of IoT technology for answers.

Many instrumentation leaders face challenges including how to:Track & monitor their instrument data such as Temperature, Humidity, Dew point or PressureAchieve real-time visibility of data to take necessary measures/actions.Enable Remote Asset management capabilities to keep a watch on the end-devices at pre-scheduled intervalsIntegrate notification engine to alert the end-customers in case of asset failures or abnormal conditions

Best Buy wanted to quickly develop and deploy apps to achieve business goals. Also, create apps that are scalable and low-maintenance.

Between 2005 and 2010, Aluar went through a substantial growth phase where most of the production facilities were upgraded. As a result of this expansion, the number of PLCs increased from 100 to 300. When it came to managing the control program software, however, flaws and cracks began to show in the established workflow and version control procedures that had prior to the growth phase, been based on manual backups and documentation. A rapid growth in the number of automation and maintenance staff (>100 users) also coincided with increasing accounts of infrequent and incomplete documentation of software versions, which then required an increasing effort where bug tracing and detection were concerned. This increased the risk of incidents that could not only affect operation, but that could also result in stoppages at the mid-term. It also increased the risk of safety risks remaining undetected.

 Brooks Brothers frequently launches new business initiatives, which helps the company stay competitive in the retail industry. The organization needed a more agile way of quickly testing these new projects. “When we embark on a new initiative, as with anything in the retail industry, it has a short timeframe from the initial idea to solving business needs, as driven by consumer preferences,” says Philip Miller, director of infrastructure and technical engineering at Brooks Brothers. “We’re very good at deploying technology that will exist for the long term in our data center, but we’ve struggled to spin up resources for testing new projects. We wanted to become more agile in moving concepts into an environment we could easily access and possibly move into production.”The organization was also seeking a more cost-effective way to manage its SAP HANA in-memory database management system, which would support a new customer relationship management (CRM) application. “We wanted to save money when we implemented the CRM system on SAP HANA, and we also wanted to be able to test out new projects on that platform,” says Miller.