Industrial Servitization What is it and why is it the future for manufacturers?

In recent decades, IT developments and the increasing use of digital technology have transformed the way the industrial sector and manufacturers are working.

In this sense, the aim is to face the great leap from the current situation in which, due to technical and technological impediments, the absence of analysis of data and information generated by industrial equipment is notorious, to a new framework in which connectivity between different equipment and systems is the norm.

This implies the need to develop new solutions that respond to these new needs: standardization, secure and robust communications, systems integration, massive data management in a cybersecure way, etc. that allow the servitization and generation of a complete offer of advanced digital services aimed at users and consumers to help them to be more efficient, profitable and sustainable in their daily activities.

Among the possible services to be offered are:

• Remote equipment management
• Renting/pay-per-use
• Unattended managed usage programs
• Predictive maintenance
• Security
• Data monetization

This means that the relevant players in the value chain must move towards a "Smart data-driven" service (i.e. based on the secure exploitation of the information generated based on the data) that provides greater added value to the customer, thus allowing them to differentiate themselves from the rest of the competitors.

Machine connectivity as a starting point towards servitization

The goal of the leaders in industrial manufacturing is to develop cybersecure equipment connectivity for intelligent data exploitation, with which to lay the foundations and gain the knowledge to be able to connect different machines allowing these machines to work together, thus facilitating:

• Process efficiency tasks.
• Better maintenance of the connected machines.
• Execution of synchronized tasks between several machines.
• Execution of tasks autonomously taking into account the context of the set.
• A single view of machine assemblies by key users.
• An improvement in the quality of the machines, not only as units, but as connected elements.
• Ensure both physical and digital security, not only machine-to-machine, but of each business unit.

All these process optimizations open up a world of possibilities for manufacturing companies, allowing them to position themselves against the competition by offering a complete package that includes machinery as before and a series of associated manufacturing services with which to differentiate themselves in order to gain a competitive advantage.

The offer of new services will produce, on the one hand, higher recurring income for the companies as opposed to the current one-off product sales and greater economic and financial stability that will allow them to explore strategic challenges in the medium to long term.

To address all of the above, a universal cybersecure platform is needed, such as Barbara, which, in addition to connecting industrial equipment in a cybersecure manner, allows the exploitation of all data related to the operation of business units (understood as groupings of connected machines) in order to generate new business models oriented towards servitization, allowing the creation of intelligent entities with several connected machines (Advance Business IoT).

Barbara, the Cybersecure Edge Platform for industrial product servitization

Barbara's edge solution provides the software infrastructure necessary to achieve all the objectives set by the Smart Manufacturing Industry:

• Interconnect any industrial equipment.
• Remotely update the different assets and applications.
• Develop, deploy and maintain large-scale, distributed algorithms on the Edge.
• Comply with cybersecurity standards.

Barbara, the Cyber Secure Industrial Edge Platform to drive distributed intelligence governance brings advanced connectivity to necessary industrial devices and provides remote upgrade capability for automated ("zero-touch") deployment.

The "tuning" or "installation" of connected industrial devices typically requires the presence of a trained technician, which entails high personnel, time and travel costs. The Barbara platform has secure communication connectors that allow automatic deployment over the network (zero-time deployments) through an initial update.

Once connectivity is addressed, Barbara also enables edge computing capabilities to allow advanced algorithms on the data produced for use cases such as predictive monitoring of devices.

Beyond connectivity and intelligence, the devices are equipped with the necessary security for their future commercialization in accordance with the EU Cybersecurity Act.

Barbara is platform and hardware independent, which gives it greater flexibility to integrate with third parties.

Taking into consideration the different types of hardware available, both connectivity and sensors, a flexible and cybersecure technology becomes indispensable:

1. Enable connectivity with multiple devices
2. Secure devices and extracted data.

Also, in any IoT project, scalability is the most critical part. How to make the project scalable in time and resources?

For the deployment of the devices and their management, Barbara has developed the Barbara OS management panel that allows remote maintenance of the devices' service life. Through the console we can perform updates, configuration changes and respond to incidents centrally in real time.

If you are interested in this article, please contact us to learn more about Barbara IoT Technology and request a  personalized demo.