AI Machine Health Is Business Health
Illustration: © AI For All
Maximizing AI-driven machine health prevents unplanned downtime and enhances asset reliability, operational efficiency, and business performance.
Augury’s 2024 Machine Health is Business Health report on the state of AI-driven machine health builds upon prior findings to uncover and compare the latest challenges, risks, and solution approaches favored by respondents today. It also exposes varying perspectives between corporate and plant-level respondents, such as in this year’s standout findings.
Workforce Concerns Persist, But Some See Efficiency Gains
While supply chain disruptions are the leading challenge from both the corporate and plant perspectives, workforce shortages and skills gaps are the second and third-ranked challenges for plant respondents, surpassing even unplanned production downtime by a significant margin.
These two workforce challenges also rank relatively high among corporate respondents, sharing fifth place.
Despite those hurdles, mitigation efforts such as adopting advanced technologies are contributing to workforce efficiency gains. For one, the use of proactive maintenance approaches — condition-based, predictive, and prescriptive (new this year) — increased from 78 percent in 2023 to 82 percent in 2024.
Additionally, the rate of respondents believing their teams respond well, very well, or extremely well to real-time changes in conditions to eliminate downtime before it occurs increased by 2 percent since 2023 to 85 percent this year.
Operational and Production Optimism Are Rising
Increased optimism was apparent when gauging how sentiment about operational and business challenges and production risk changed over the last year. Specifically:
- 22% of corporate respondents are more optimistic about overcoming operational challenges
- 25% of plant respondents are more optimistic about overcoming business challenges
- 22% of all respondents are more optimistic about overcoming production risk
Overall optimism improved except in the second category, overcoming business challenges, where increased pessimism exceeded increased optimism by just three percentage points.
Corporate and Plant Perspectives Diverge
Looking at the biggest challenges reported this year compared to 2023, there are greater swings in the corporate responses than in plant responses.
For instance, the front line and back office moved farther apart on the challenge of adopting new technology, which jumped from 11 to 29 percent for corporate respondents but was relatively flat for plant respondents year over year.
In contrast, the two groups came closer together in their views on the workforce skills gap/upskilling. The rate for corporate respondents increased by eight percentage points and plant respondents reduced by one percentage point, but the concern remains more acute at the plant level.
Unplanned production downtime perspectives are now comparable this year, whereas, in 2023, the concern among corporate respondents was 15 percentage points lower than the plant path.
Current Challenges
The challenge of supply chain disruptions in operations ranks first in 2024 from the corporate point of view, though with a notably lower share (40 percent) than in 2023 (61 percent).
Among the increasing pain points are adopting new technology at 29 percent, up from 11 percent last year, and workforce skills gap/upskilling, now at 24 percent versus 16 percent in 2023. Growth in this pair may reflect attempts to mitigate the increasing labor-resource risk by adopting more advanced technologies.
For plant respondents, supply chain disruptions also remain the primary challenge at their site (48 versus 50 percent last year). Workforce skills gap/upskilling (41 percent), adopting new technology (13 percent), and unplanned production downtime (27 percent) results are also similar to last year (42 percent, 15 percent and 26 percent, respectively). Two rising pain points include time to market at 8 percent, up from 1 percent in 2023, and capacity constraints at 18 percent versus 10 percent in 2023.
Production Roadblocks & Risks
The two biggest risks to meeting production targets today are unexpected equipment failures (28 percent) and workforce shortages (27 percent), compared to 34 percent and 18 percent, respectively, in 2023. Workforce shortages and raw material shortages traded positions over the last year, with the former gaining a 9 percent share in 2024 and the latter falling 10 percent.
Overall, almost three in five respondents (58 percent) say they feel about the same as last year about overcoming production risk. Marginally more respondents perceived gains in optimism (22 percent) than pessimism (21 percent).
Maintenance Trends & Opportunities
When asked which maintenance approaches respondents use, fourteen percent of plant respondents cited the use of prescriptive maintenance, while the other two proactive approaches — predictive and condition- based maintenance — each received 34 percent. Preventative (74 percent) and run-to-failure (37 percent) approaches remain common as they are strategically applied to lower-criticality assets.
Notably, the addition of prescriptive maintenance and the corresponding decline in preventative (down 3 percent) and predictive maintenance (down 9 percent) is a welcome development.
Shifting from routine preventative maintenance and basic predictive maintenance to prescriptive maintenance helps to increase workforce efficiency and safety and reduce critical asset downtime. As more prescriptive solutions become available and more plants leverage the technology, the industry as a whole will gain from its value.
Final Thoughts
This year’s research on the state of machine health reveals progress, priority shifts, and some surprises. The need to upskill remains high across the board — it even surpasses unplanned production downtime for plant-level respondents.
Those deploying advanced technology solutions are gaining optimism as the value is proven. The combination of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and reliability expertise holds the key to overcoming multiple roadblocks and challenges, from workforce gaps and unplanned downtime to asset data collection.
Additionally, big challenges remain, and manufacturers should be eyeing strategies that leverage those same tools and setting ambitious goals around supply chain management, tech adoption, upskilling, and other areas.
There are generational advances happening in technology, and more industrial companies should be reimagining and transforming how their plants run.
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Author
A leader in Machine Health and Process Health solutions, Augury uses purpose-built AI technology, trained by industry experts and the world’s largest data library, to help manufacturing and industrial companies eliminate production downtime, improve process efficiency, maximize yield, and reduce waste and emissions. Our global customers achieve 3-10x ROI, often in a matter of months. Augury operates in a variety of manufacturing sectors such as food, beverage, CPG (consumer packaged goods), pulp and paper, forest products, chemicals, building materials, and pharmaceuticals as well as in the energy market.
Author
A leader in Machine Health and Process Health solutions, Augury uses purpose-built AI technology, trained by industry experts and the world’s largest data library, to help manufacturing and industrial companies eliminate production downtime, improve process efficiency, maximize yield, and reduce waste and emissions. Our global customers achieve 3-10x ROI, often in a matter of months. Augury operates in a variety of manufacturing sectors such as food, beverage, CPG (consumer packaged goods), pulp and paper, forest products, chemicals, building materials, and pharmaceuticals as well as in the energy market.
