A new study from Vanson Bourne, sponsored by ServiceMax, from GE Digital, has found that 75 per cent of IT and field service leaders makers believe that machines will receive better, preventative healthcare than human beings by 2020.
IT and field service leaders surveyed believe advancements in machines having the ability to predict failure, and take preventative measures or self-healing actions are widely viewed as beneficial to a company’s bottom line.
The research reveals the ways organizations monitor industrial equipment is providing a blueprint for human health, the companies said.
Among the findings:
• 46 per cent of respondents say machines requesting help themselves will help their company better manage their equipment assets.
• 39 per cent of respondents say predictive maintenance would help better manage asset equipment.
• 44 per cent of respondents say digital twin with predictive maintenance and artificial intelligence would help prevent major failures.
• 69 per cent of respondents surveyed say they would like their own personal digital twin to help themselves and medical professionals regulate their health in non-invasive ways by taking early action and preventative measures.
The new study, “After The Fall: Cost, Causes and Consequences of Unplanned Downtime,” surveyed 450 field service and IT decision makers in the U.K., U.S., France and Germany across the manufacturing, medical, oil and gas, energy and utilities, telecoms, distribution, logistics and transport sectors, among others.
According to Gartner, by 2020, 10 per cent of emergency field service work will be both triggered and scheduled by artificial intelligence.
The new study highlights the impact of new technology like artificial intelligence, analytics and use of a digital twin on how industrial machines are monitored to predict when a piece of equipment will fail and what preventative service maintenance is required.
“In the same way that organizations want zero unplanned downtime with their equipment assets to avoid expensive loss of production or service, we want to mitigate our own human 'outages,'” Mark Homer, vice-president Global Customer Transformation for ServiceMax, from GE Digital, said in a statement.
“This holistic view of how something is operating – whether it’s a person, an equipment plant or an individual component in a machine – has historically been disjointed and only visible when something goes wrong. Today, organizations are now acutely aware of the value of a real-time view on the health and performance of their critical assets, as well as predictive analytics on when preventative maintenance or intervention is required, and access to time series data, service history and optimization demands.
“The research found that more than half of companies are planning to invest in a digital twin in the next three years. The value of these digital insights in an industrial context is starting to generate interest in preventative maintenance in a human context,” said Homer.
