Technology Record - Issue 22: Autumn 2021

161 MANU FAC TUR I NG & R E SOUR C E S services equipment for distributing soft drinks, water and beer. Celli recognised the IIoT as an opportunity to transform its business, while put- ting more visibility, control and value, into the hands of customers. This IIoT data – turned into insights – enables their customers to remotely perform inspections and sanitation checks, con- trol refrigeration, monitor power consumption levels and more. Collectively, these capabilities translate into a substantial reduction in equip- ment downtime for Celli Group’s customers. By shedding needed downtime, these customers are increasing beverage sales and profits. Celli is also using the IIoT to collect equipment usage data, enabling product design and production enhancements. These improvements have already reduced equipment failures by 13 per cent. How do you see the IIoT evolving to meet the growing and maturing needs on smart manufacturing? As part of the natural progression of technology advancements, we are squarely in the ‘applied physics’ stage of the IIoT, where the advance- ments in foundational, enabling technology such as connectivity, analytics and artificial intelligence techniques, and context-aware systems integra- tion are being informed by the most impactful use cases we see across our customers’ business chal- lenges. State-of-the-art platforms like ThingWorx and Azure IoT have been maturing to support ever-increasing scale requirements, and to meet industry demands for plug-and-play interopera- bility. We are unifying cloud and edge computing so that the right compute workload gets done at the right place, without manufacturers needing to be experts in the technology. Where do you see the IIoT making the biggest business impact? It’s all about better efficiency. We are driving the top line by increasing throughput and capacity to meet customer and market demand. We are impacting the bottom line through maximum efficiency, reducing scrap, eliminating unsched- uled maintenance and ensuring workers aren’t sidelined by unsynchronised machinery or pro- cesses. Combining the two helps customers real- ise meaningful outcomes at scale. What’s next? We are excited about deepening and broadening our ThingWorx platform’s ability to directly solve manufacturing challenges as a full end-to-end solution for the mainstream market. Our cus- tomers already benefit from the integration of Azure IoT Hub into our platform and solutions, now we are looking forward to tapping into the developments in Azure Digital Twin Service and Azure IoT Central. These advancements bring a complete view of the assets, spaces and relation- ships with process into our solutions, while giving our customers a scalable way to manage their data connectivity and the linkages their machine data needs to make with our platform. It’s a truly excit- ing time to participate in this stage of the IIoT, and we’re proud to be partnered with Microsoft as we blaze these trails together.