ei3: Leveraging the Internet to Monitor, Manage, and Analyze Package Printing and Converting Machines
Spencer Cramer, CEO of ei3 Corporation, talks about how the company, founded in 1999, leverages the Internet to monitor, manage, and analyze machines. ei3 has partnered with Bobst to serve the package printing and converting industry and now has more than 5,000 machines connected in 100 countries around the world. The next step is develop predictive algorithms to identify potential machine issues before they occur.
For packaging producers, converters and die-makers, achieving better-quality and increasing operational efficiency would involve significant capital expenditure, but thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT), it is low-cost and effective than ever before. When fully adopted, IIoT becomes part of a management culture that is driven by data facts and insights, creating maximum benefits for the organization.
Peter Drucker (arguable the inventor of modern business management) gets credit for the profound insight that you cannot improve what you cannot measure. Therefore, increasing business value is all about measuring things. And, the measurements and their analysis are not just backdrops to business decisions but become the core of them. IIoT takes the all important role of collecting, harvesting, and presenting that data.
Packaging producers, converters and die-makers talk about the transformation in their daily operations brought out by applying ei3‘s cutting-edge technology.
- Ability to create Certificate of Analysis (CoA)s automatically based on real-time process data collected during manufacturing.
- Real-time lists that shows how all thier machines are doing, by shift, job and day to help find the leaders and laggards
- Tools to coordinate tests and capture Quality Assuarnce Results
- Alerting on deviations from key settings
- and more…
Our clients benefit from the value of IIoT in many ways; most commonly, increased asset utilization, reduced downtime, increased after-sales service revenue, and happier clients. The most impact we have is with clients that use ei3, not as a reporting tool but that have embedded the ei3 IIoT solution into their management culture. Because, as Peter Drucker discovered, managers need measurements.
