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by Stephanie Neil, MA Editorial Staff Posted on Friday, November 03, 2006 3:10:08 PM   | Abstract: | Wireless mesh networks will allow manufacturers to access unexplored corners of the company and turn captured data into viable information. |
Air compressors are used in 97% of industrial manufacturing plants. For Gardner Denver, a maker of air compressors, that's a good statistic to build a new business on. Not to sell the equipment -- they've already done that -- but rather to provide an interactive knowledge-management service for customers that lowers the cost of maintenance, keeps building operations humming and, most importantly, establishes customer trust. Starting this summer, Gardner Denver's Compressor Division (Quincy, IL) will offer its customers a service that allows the company to remotely tap into an intelligent controller mounted on the equipment. Armed with previously untapped information, it will be able to tell customers exactly when the expendables such as oil will run out (before, not after the fact), as well as provide maintenance and operational trending information for the life of the compressor. For a monthly subscription fee, customers will get the assurance that this vital piece of industrial equipment will not be unexpectedly offline. And for Gardner Denver, the service will add a nice little revenue stream. The company, like so many other manufacturers struggling to differentiate their products, is eyeballing new ways to build customer loyalty while making money. This predictive-maintenance service is a good opportunity to do just that. And it wouldn't be possible without the new sensor-based wireless networking technology that is now emerging. For the last few years, companies like Millennial Net Inc. (Burlington, MA), Ember Corp. (Boston), Dust Networks Inc. (Berkeley, CA) and Chipcon AS (Oslo, Norway) have been rolling out chips and protocol stacks for radio frequency (RF) communication. What they are selling are the guts to what is called a wireless mesh network -- an ad hoc, self-healing network that uses intelligent sensors to gather data from devices and equipment to be transported back to a central server. [Click to continue] |