Getting the competitive edge with a fully connected environment
One of the biggest challenges for businesses today is keeping pace with the rapidly evolving technological landscape. It can be a costly exercise trying to constantly update hardware and firmware to the latest standards.
Edge computing, however, can give companies the tools they need to stay on the front foot of industrial technology. How can this be achieved? And what benefits can this technology bring to your business?
Flexibility
Businesses invest in technology because it serves a purpose, but overtime requirements may change due to rapid growth or a shift to different working practices, such as remote working. Whilst it is important to find an architecture that works for the business now, new technology also needs to be adaptable to be able to meet future needs. By picking a flexible edge computing solution, businesses can reduce the need for costly hardware changes.
Modular design
Linked to the flexibility of edge computing software is its ability to adapt to changes of capacity. A modular design allows companies to add additional edge computing hardware to incumbent systems as the needs and capacities increase. Again, this allows companies to utilise the benefits of edge computing and retain agility in the market, responding to opportunities that arise when demand changes.
Big Data
One of the key advantages of edge computing is the intelligence it can provide companies about their systems. In industries such as manufacturing, businesses often use proprietary systems that can’t communicate with each other or provide data about their processes. Edge computing allows companies to extract the raw data and filter through it, so that it can be used by businesses to make their operations more efficient. This helps to reduce costs and improve processes across the whole company.
Economies of Scale
Many companies in the industrial and manufacturing sectors rely on highly standardised, automated processes in order to be able to leverage large economies of scale. In industries where sites might be temporary or need to move periodically this can be difficult to create in the short term. Having a flexible edge computing solution that can automate processes quickly either on-premise or in the cloud is key to saving businesses both time and money when setting up new sites.
Predictive Maintenance
Edge computing has the ability to save costs by alerting companies as and when their equipment is likely to need a repair or maintenance, using data parameters to pre-emptively predict when a piece of equipment will be coming to the end of its life. This helps to reduce costly breakdowns and keep operations running at full capacity.
Industrial Networking
One thing that ties all the capabilities of edge computing together is a network, and more importantly, a network that can cope with and manage the needs of the business. Those needs could range from remote access, rugged conditions, large data sets, and integration with legacy networks. A strong industrial networking solution is the foundation from which edge computing can make your business thrive. It allows machines to talk with one another, give you vital data, reducing your costs, and increasing your profits.
Working in tandem together, both industrial networking and edge computing will help you to both enhance your existing sites to allow them to work at their full potential and create a more efficient system for setting up new plants. It gives you the platform in the present that you need for your future.
For more information about how Distec can help your business with intelligent Edge Computing solutions, contact us here