The sheer breadth of support functions provided by an FM company to a manufacturing facility make it impractical, if not downright impossible, for FM operations to be monitored manually. And when the performance of a manufacturing unit relies not only on the value of the finished product, but also on the cost of producing it, it becomes incumbent on an FM provider to help the client minimise the latter by keeping the costs of housekeeping, engineering, maintenance etc to a minimum.
What makes both these goals possible? Digitisation. Rupal Sinha, CEO IFMS, Quess Corp Ltd breaks down how digital tools are a boon for production units.
Matured facility management is an integrated approach to operate, maintain and improve the building, infrastructure and process, aiming to provide high productivity and efficiency and supporting the primary objective of the organisation. Increasing customer-facing digital technologies has paved the way for customers’ strategic agenda. With homegrown digital applications and technology partners, our robust IoT is generating data analytics for better decision making.
DigiFM in manufacturing
In the manufacturing sector, digitised facility management plays a vital role in creating a smart infrastructure that integrates building maintenance with dispersed physical assets. It manages their lifecycle maintenance, monitors the production process, environment, health & safety and security with the use of various tools in an integrated platform capable of analytical predictions that assist in better facility performance and efficiency.
Though there is nothing like ‘one size fits all’, we strive to deliver a digital excellence blueprint, customised to the client’s requirements through multiple connected solutions and enterprise platforms. Our systems and operating procedures are integrated with advanced IT technologies, supported by trained staff for on-site course of action.
Why digitise?
Any manufacturing infrastructure has defined goals to save man-hours, increase productivity, improve their audit scores, reduce breakdown costs and identify production loss. We assist them in achieving all these parameters by harnessing digital tools.
Asset maintenance at any manufacturing unit is an area of importance, where we deploy our IoT-enabled preventive maintenance strategies that aim to schedule maintenance, aiming to minimise costs of breakdown and downtime. Our smart sensors and actuators installed in the machines and connected to the technology platform generate data which, using AI, helps our facility operators to identify hot spots of production loss, intelligently monitor machinery conditions, their usage and adjust operation and asset utilisation.
Checklists and data
Our digital checklist and help desk management helps schedule day-to-day upkeep of infrastructure in terms of cleanliness and hygiene, ensuring timely scheduled activities and efficiently utilising manpower and consumables.
Our IoT-enabled sensors collect real-time data about temperature, humidity and air pressure that is extremely relevant to a manufacturing plant for monitoring production and adjusting processes, enhancing production efficiencies and conserving costs.
We are now engaging in deploying intelligent devices in factories across the supply chain to monitor output against predetermined targets to bring significant improvement in operational efficiencies. Our FM managers are now getting trained to leverage IoT solutions to enhance their performance and be a contributor to the output generated by our manufacturing clients.
