Industrial and agro-industrial enterprises are ‘asset-stacked’ commercial operations. From pumps to actuators, ball mills to clarifiers, flow sensors to PLCs, and electric arc furnaces to optical sorting systems. Diverse technologies of origin dozens of OEMs, if not hundreds or in some cases even thousands thereof, depending on the particular scale and complexity of the operation in question. For a large mine or mining group, a comprehensive printed asset register inclusive of all the supporting operational and maintenance documentation would likely put The Great Library of Alexandria to shame by its comparative magnitude, and several times over at that.
On each occasion that an asset is acquired, maintained, retrofitted, upgraded, relocated, decommissioned or otherwise managed, doing so efficiently and within both the asset’s design specification and the parameters of insurance coverage, necessitates that in-amongst this extraordinary body of information, several documents are timeously and sequentially found, extracted, consulted, updated, replaced or in some manner appropriately utilised. The most learned of the librarians of antiquity would, no doubt, be confounded by such a task. Ladders and robed men endlessly swaying in contorted panic between row upon row of shelving. Knocking over a candelabra or lantern, or observing the place being set otherwise ablaze in some malevolent act, may prove to come at some relief to the archival superintendents.
In contemporary industry, matters such as obsolescence management alone (not a concept either known of or understood in any practical sense by the majority of the corporate administrative or accounting technocracy) are nigh on impossible responsibilities to prosecute with reasonable efficiency, as in amongst numerous relevant variables, reliable data pertaining to the status and historical performance of the asset in question is a necessary prerequisite.
By way of example, the same make, model and age of pump will be exposed to different life-cycle support requirements at a mine in the Katanga Province of the DRC as opposed to one located within the Bushveld Igneous Complex of South Africa’s North West Province. Even with a fulsome understanding of how best to prepare for this delta in support requirement based on the asset’s maintenance manual, real operational data for the asset is essential to optimise the support profile for the relevant operational environment.
And the cost of an inability to accurately measure and then predict performance is incalculable. When the pump fails at 03:00am on January 1st, with support expertise on vacation and no spares in inventories, how long does it take to rectify the failure and what is the true comprehensive cost to a mine? Does the responsible enterprise simply deploy capital in the acquisition and integration of redundant pumps, or perhaps over-stocked inventories? Are storage buildings then required to be larger, served more frequently by trucks, and demanding more security, all at greater cost? How are insurance premiums affected? The yearly numbers across all such assets at a large corporation, combining increased CAPEX, OPEX and lost production, must be staggering.
ERP systems and whatever other alphabet softwares have traditionally been advertised as panaceas to such real operational challenges. However, these systems are to a large extent outgrowths of accounting and procurement tools. Useful to the accountants and financial managers, as every input will end up filed in a neat digital pigeonhole and correlate to inevitably finessed management accounts, but the information will often be to a considerable extent divorced from the frontline operational reality.
As each generation of asset becomes ever more sophisticated, with multiple sub-systems and a growing complexity of firmware, the challenge faced in the operational and life-cycle management thereof only escalates.
Can even the most digitally sophisticated of heavy industry enterprises produce on demand an accurate asset register? And if so, can the same data set inform the enquirer as to the precise location, operational status and, in the case of an instrument such as a sensor, detail its calibration status? How about defining which pumps of a certain size tend to be most economical to operate over a 10 year time frame? Would a question regarding the asset’s MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) or any obsolescence considerations be worth asking? In all likelihood, such questions would required to be asked of several differing departments, who would consult multiple siloed data sets, and would all told consume many hundreds of hours of work by skilled personnel in order to generate a response.
Even post millions of USD spent on overlapping digital systems, the principle software interlocutor in such an inquest would ultimately prove to be Excel, manifest in the examination of an abundance of largely outdated spreadsheets, which would total an aggregate square meterage broadly equivalent to that of Heathrow’s long promised 3rd runway. And the answer would be wrong. And no-one would be the wiser regarding the not inconsiderable percentage of key instruments that are generating inaccurate but operationally critical sensor readings. But, where relevant, the answer probably would suitably correlate to those management accounts following a smidgin of jiggery pokery. And this pageant of analysis would be re-performed all over again next year. And many of those erroneous sensor readings would remain just that. And there would be even more sensors and instruments to account for. The complexity only densifies year upon year and terrifyingly so.
No one is at fault in this industrial fog of war. It’s a damn complicated business. But it’s a situation entirely rescuable. Why? Because the data necessary to do so exists, it just requires being appropriately captured and harnessed. And there is going to be ever more of it. As does Nanodyn exist, and we know how to convert the growing resource of data into real-time actionable intelligence - intelligence to feed any enterprise function.
We are an enterprise immersed in technology and soaked through to the marrow of our bones by the possibilities derivable therefrom.
We fuse human, machine and intelligence in a new cybernetic harmony, enabled by the spectacular faculties of the rising tide of technological sophistication in which our Global society resides engulfed. Unceasing possibility lurks everywhere and all of the time, forever shapeshifting - it requires but the imagination, acumen and exacting vigour to render it ‘untombed’.
The hyper-complex industrial processes of today and tomorrow demand a new dimension of asset command and control. Every asset must at the minimum be under constant remote supervision, and where possible governable by means of bi-directional communications. Asset registers must be live schedules updated in real-time. And an asset intelligence reservoir must exist to feed whatever scope of Advanced Process Control and other forms of I4.0 ‘system agency’, inclusive of the entirely non-trivial domain of life-cycle support and related functions. The configuration of insurance profiles must accordingly be optimised, with consideration applied to the implementation of captive insurance schemes, and the list goes on. All attainable with the technology of today, let alone that of tomorrow.
Nanodyn possesses the proprietary digital systems to enable all that envisaged hereabove. As well as the capabilities to achieve the vast span of possible utilities and optimisations that ML and AI can deliver thereupon. We have thoughtfully designed, validated and entrenched the prerequisite underpinnings for such an endeavour. What we now seek is a long-term partnering client with the ambition to redefine the frontier of asset command and control on a systemic scale, and who recognises the criticality of such an integrated system to a robust and prosperous enterprise vitality. A partner desirous of becoming the global first mover in this sphere.
Rockets are being landed backwards, and the Giza pyramids are being internally scanned to unprecedented detail using Muons created by cosmic radiation. We can do this.
Let’s upgrade the World.
Mr. Andrew Charter, CEO at Nanodyn
