MRO Solutions - November Edition

IIOT in MRO:
Frontliner’s Lens
Article by
Sakib Iftekhar
Internal Sales Team Lead
RS Components Australia
My problem-solving & customer-centric sales
leadership approach is put into test when I
see my MRO customers ‘respectfully’ losing it on
my team at times- “can you deliver by today- my
facility’s system broke down & project is due for
completion this week”- just one of many scenarios.
Digging down the trail of possible whys through
my relatively non-technical but inquisitive sphere, I
managed to land on my ‘big discovery moment’ and
felt it was worth it on paper- with or without the silly
satires. It couldn’t have been simpler- like answers to
many issues: ‘predictability’ as the key subset, & as
buzzy it may sound- IIOT is the way out clearly; little
broadly put I am aware- but the narrative remains
unchanged.
Advantage of being a member of a
leading global distributor is to be able
to see the bigger picture- specially
when the CRM is loaded with hundreds
& thousands of accounts from literally
every corner of industrial, manufacturing,
electrical & other industries. Painting
up the backdrop of how huge it felt to
me specially as a new enthusiast, let me
share some landscape stats from the
surface:
• The Australian MRO market is valued
to be worth $18–25 billion in 2019 and
is expected to grow at a rate of 2–3
percent annually
• The Asia-Pacific region accounts for
approx. 37 percent of the global MRO
market and is expected to remain in the
similar range until 2020
• 55% are piloting programs & 3%
of companies globally completed
transformation in a global IIOT industry
that touching $5-6 Trillion by 2023
• IIOT can achieve potential benefits
of $194-308B annually over 8-15
years across the 5 industries which
constitutes 25% of Australian GDP
with productivity improvements of 3%
annually
Source: ACS Report (Prepared by PwC) 2018
What apparently made more sense to me
connecting few dots is the data from The World
Economic Forum’s (WEF) Readiness for the
Future of Production Report 2018 which does
not include Australia among the 25 ‘Leading
countries’ that have both a strong existing
production base and exhibit a high level of
readiness for the future. Australia is, however,
named in the report as being among several
‘High Potential countries’ strong enough to
impact the APAC picture for good.
The report states that Australia is in a strong
position to potentially improve its production
base in future and cites signed I4.0 agreement
with Germany and the Australian Government’s
forward-thinking strategies as positive
signs. While high-volume manufacturing
is increasingly becoming the domain of
countries such as China, the US and Japan,
the opportunity highlighted for Australian
companies is in focussing on low volume, but
highly customised products delivered using
advanced manufacturing techniques. The bold
lines that felt intriguing on the article was “this
high quality, smart and agile manufacturing is
where Australia’s highest potential lies.”
‘PREDICT’ AS KEY
As one of the key outcomes of IIOT in MRO,
what predictive maintenance does is
eliminate manual intervention & achieve
greater operational efficiency. IIOT enabled
machineries within ‘smart factories’ predict
potential breakdowns & failures in advance &
carry out:
• Accurate Demand Prediction
• Automated Procurement
• Automated Production
• Automated Repair & Maintenance Systems
The above, if deployed & leveraged fully, can
be ground-breaking specially when costsavings
is sitting as the top agenda in the
executive board meetings. Being said that, the
list of challenges within MRO are long too; but
unlike a great movie with a strong antagonist
fighting the hero, it seems ‘cons’ are weaker
here & less scary than the ‘pros’.
What makes MRO challenging as a category
itself are 2-folds:
• High volume of multiple SKUs within inventory
management
• MRO materials & service requirements are
fragmented across operational floors and
different machinery types- making demand
tracking, forecasting a cumbersome process
Now, incorporating some information
from a report by RMIT University (2020)
here, the biggest barriers internally within
Australian SME context are: acquiring the
data, integrating systems, data visualization
& extracting value from the data. Other
barriers surfaced were I4.0 savvy-workforce,
understanding of I4.0, data security concerns
& lack of trusted supplier partners who
understands & facilitates end-to-end transition
& deployments.
This last bit clearly overlaps with both key
prerequisites & impacts of IIOT itself, i.e., the
evolving of & partnership with business models
& companies offering ‘MRO-as-a-service’
- managing all MRO procurement activity
including system integrators to develop the
IIOT systems - ‘one-stop-place’ simply put.
Companies who specialised in IIOT solutions &
have invested in it found that benefits outweigh
the cost by huge margins. A survey by world
industrial automation (2016-17) on companies
who invested in IIOT clearly depicted improved
operational efficiency by 47% and downtime
reduction by mammoth 28%. Now, surpassing
all others but with only through my frontliner’s
viewfinder, the possible dents of IIOT are:
• Improved customer information,
communication, tracking and reporting,
• Predictive and pre-emptive customer service
and market development practices
• Capacity for sharing real-time order status
updates with customers.
• Greater agility to react quickly and precisely
to dynamic market requirements
In context of current Covid19 which has
enabled digital transformation as a speed
never imagined before- now is the
time I believe. It has brought to light
the promises of IIOT to connect the
physical & digital world along with
super-delicious food-for-thought for
industries & government to leverage
those opportunities for economic
growth & social benefit.