Predictive maintenance

In the film Minority Report, the foreknowledge of three psychics is used to predict crimes and apprehend the future offenders, stopping the crimes before they occur. Predictive maintenance strategies are not too dissimilar to this, in that they stop problems before they arise, saving both time and money for the company.

In the classic film series Back to the Future, the risks and rewards of acting based on the knowledge of future events are explored through the adventures of Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly. Manufacturers can reap the rewards of predicting the future by using machine learning to implement a predictive maintenance strategy and save substantial amounts of time and money.

Unplanned machine downtime costs the world’s manufacturers over $50 billion a year, with a major cause of this being unexpected equipment failure. How can modern sensor networks reduce unplanned machine downtime in the manufacturing industry?