RS Industria customers and senior leadership shared their experiences of IIoT at leading industry trade show Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2023
“Getting back to a live event – you can’t beat it,” said John Bound, Head of Proposition for RS Industria, when interviewed at Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2023. “Teams and email are all very well, but actually meeting people, there’s a level of empathy and discussion and understanding that’s very difficult to get digitally.
“We’re delighted to be back.”
It seems Bound wasn’t alone in his enthusiasm, with more than 10,000 professionals from the worlds of manufacturing, design, engineering and maintenance, along with 450 STEM students and 342 exhibitors including RS Industria, attending over the two days.
Here are some of the highlights.
Gathering of industry
Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2023, the biggest industrial sector event in the UK, was held at the NEC in Birmingham on 7-8 June.
The event bought together a range of trade shows, such as Smart Factory, Design & Engineering Expo and Maintec, and featured summits focused on manufacturing digitalisation and SME growth. There were solutions theatres dedicated to automation and robotics, digital transformation, innovation, industrial data and artificial intelligence (AI), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and connectivity. The Maintec Keynote theatre, sponsored by RS, was filled with delegates on both days.
The event chair, Stephen Phipson, CEO of the manufacturers’ association MAKE UK, stated that “Manufacturing and Engineering Week has gone from strength to strength from last year to this year and we expect it to grow even further next year.
“Key challenges were high on the agenda for the second year with skills, supply chain and sustainability discussed in detail.”
Hearing from customers
The team at RS Industria, a modular IIoT platform, were keen to be involved with Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2023. Why? One reason, explained Bound, is that “we’re here to learn.”
“The world is digitising. Maintenance is digitising. The whole way that maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) is procured and managed is going to change as data is used better within the MRO supply chain.
“We’re here to tell people about our proposition but, most importantly, to listen to customers about what their needs are in this space.”
Sharing insights and expertise
Another reason for RS Industria to be involved with Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2023 was the opportunity to share expertise and experience with delegates.
Event organisers invited RS Industria, along with colleagues from the wider RS Group, to be part of the speaker programme. Their talks and presentations explored important topics within maintenance engineering and digital transformation. Joseph Da Silva, Chief Information Security Officer at RS Group, for example, shared practical advice on cyber-security and IIoT to an audience in the IIoT & Connectivity Solutions Theatre.
Elsewhere in the arena, Rob Webster, Head of Onsite Condition Monitoring at RS Maintenance, and Gary Harvey, Head of Field Services at RS, shared a stage to consider the cost of downtime from an engineer’s perspective. In another session, Pupsi Phull, Director of Technical and Value-Added Services at RS Group, and Ian Bell, Vice President of Group Facilities and Health & Safety at RS Maintenance, reviewed findings from “Industry in Motion: Maintenance Engineering Report 2023”, the product of a partnership between RS and the Institution of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE).
Richard Jeffers, founder and Managing Director of RS Industria, was busy with speaking engagements too. During a talk entitled “Measuring means money”, part of the Manufacturing Digitalisation Summit, Jeffers explained how obtaining and analysing data from your assets can lead to significant cost savings and make maintenance more efficient.
Learning from experience
Finally, through their presence at Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2023, the RS Industria team were able to offer delegates real-world examples illustrating how IIoT could transform maintenance within their organisation.
They shared, for instance, case studies of RS Industria customers to demonstrate how the digital transformation process can work as well as the tangible benefits that can result. On the RS Industria stand, visitors could learn about how its plug-and-play system enabled preserve manufacturer Histon to establish baseline performance levels on critical machinery and create warning alerts for when performance changed – saving £20,000 of potential downtime costs. Another case study showed how vibration sensors installed at a plant owned by Refresco, the world’s largest independent bottler, alerted maintenance engineers to signs of possible line failure. The savings amount to £60,000 in labour costs and £40,000 avoided costs for replacement parts.
Other RS Industria customers attended Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2023 in person, including Phil Dewson, Head of Maintenance & Facilities at the UK’s largest bicycle manufacturer, Brompton. Thanks to RS Industria technologies, Brompton transitioned to smart maintenance, with continuous monitoring of a critical asset and planned maintenance based on real-time data. As well as saving £60,000 in energy costs, this shift allows the plant to produce 20,000 more bicycles each year.
Ben Botwright, Engineering Manager at the Kerry Foods production site in Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, even appeared alongside Jeffers in the IIoT & Connectivity Solutions Theatre. Working together, RS Industria and Kerry Foods reduced site energy consumption by 14% within just a few weeks. They also used IIoT to make huge improvements in wastewater compliance. Botwright and Jeffers discussed different aspects of the latter project, from legacy issues with the effluent treatment plant to pay back from an investment perspective, in front of an audience of industry peers keen to hear about the latest developments within maintenance engineering.
To find out more about how RS Industria and Kerry Foods improved wastewater compliance management, check out our article on Richard Jeffers and Ben Botwright’s session at Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2023