One only has to search “supply chain issues” in the news to understand how widespread and disruptive these issues are across many industries from automobile manufacturing right into our world of automation. Electronic components are one particularly hard-hit area.
I caught up with Emerson’s Tinh Phan about some ways manufacturers and producers can address some of the long lead times that they may be experiencing from their suppliers with regard to instrumentation and automation.
Tinh noted that establishing a predictive maintenance approach to your instrumentation and automation assets can help plants avoid unplanned shutdowns and inefficient practices due to long lead time to get devices. Early notifications of impending issues based on real-time condition data from intelligent field devices enable plant staff to respond more quickly and make informed decisions to repair devices in order to maintain plant uptime.
AMS Device Manager provides early warning alerts for potential device failures and has best practice recommendations of how to mitigate these issues during the time to get device replacements. Configurations from these intelligent devices are captured by AMS Device Manager and the AMS Trex Device Communicator. By having access to these configurations maintenance and instrumentation staff can perform quick and easy device replacement upon arrival of the new device.
With the configurations captured, online monitoring and device alerts can be sent to the appropriate personnel for response. This simplifies troubleshooting for issues as they arise. The earlier a problem can be identified, the sooner the resolution can be enacted including procuring a replacement device before failure occurs.
Tinh explained that the AMS Device View dashboard can be viewed from a PC, tablet or mobile device to enable experts located remotely to access device health and calibration information for situation awareness and fast response.
Access to information for early recognition can help mitigate the issues of unplanned failures and the lead times associated with their replacement. Visit the AMS Device Manager and AMS Trex Device Communicator sections on Emerson.com for more on how to use these applications to drive more predictive maintenance practices.
