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Seamless Remote Operations | SmartHub | InCentrik

Written by The skylabs Team | Jul 2, 2020 6:53:07 PM

As companies are requiring employees to work from home, unfortunately, manufacturers face the reality that manufacturing requires employees to work on-site.

Learn how SmartHub can assist your manufacturing facility in operating safely during these difficult times.

The Challenge: Stay Safe and Keep Production Running

How do we maintain social distances when our operators, contractors, engineers and maintenance personnel are all working to solve major plant issues and keep the plant running at peak performance?

“You can’t build jets working from home.”

This is our new normal and we must be embrace this "new" work environment.

Embracing Digital Transformation in Order to Adapt to Global Crisis

Since COVID-19 is here to stay and will be impacting business indefinitely, employers may take several steps to maintain a safe work environment. 

For example:

Test your employees and contractors everyday by taking their temperature. 

Some companies are requiring testing 72 hours prior to showing up on the job site.  Document and electronically notify management to keep management abreast of the current workforce availability.

You can use something like the Crisis Communication App to allow employees to keep leadership informed of their current situation and the company can provide announcements to all employees of policies and updates related to the outbreak.

Avoid unnecessary personnel on site that can perform their job duties remotely.

Traditionally, employees come to work and sit in their office to use tools like OSI PI, SEEQ, SmartHub and others to do their job. 

These tools can and should be used remotely.  The risk outweighs the rewards for potentially infecting family members and fellow coworkers.

Maintain your social distance. 

How many times do we see someone wearing a mask on their chin in order to talk to the person six feet away? 

It is not reasonable or practical to do this long term. 

Technology gives us the ability to communicate work instructions, safety notices, permitting and many other common job functions without any face to face interaction.     

Give all employees a common and easy platform

Since the way we have been doing our day to day work is no longer an option, this is going to be a huge cultural change for some of our more seasoned employees.   

It is important to give all employees a common and easy platform like Microsoft Teams and SmartHub for sharing and documenting information. 

This will help propagate knowledge to junior employees and keep everyone on the same page.   


And the list goes on...

There are some really great tools designed to provide peak operational efficiency without exposing personnel.

Continue Producing Safely While Social Distancing With SmartHub

At Sklylabs, we have enabled manufacturing facilities to adapt to the global COVID-19 pandemic with the use of SmartHub.

What is SmartHub?

SmartHub is a standardized management system tool that establishes a single centralized data structure for your business.

SmartHub establishes streamlined and efficient workflows that enables business visibility from the C-suite down to the shop floor. 

This solution enables your manufacturing facility to bridge the gap between OT and IT to provide simple enough solution for easy adoption while maintaining world class IT security - Combining manual functions and non-integrated systems together into one application.

Your Benefits with SmartHub

  • Makes your production team agile and resilient in times of crisis, and even more so in normal times

  • Business resilience is beneficial in normal times

  • Reduces physical connections with contract employees which eliminates risk of exposure

  • Allows your front-line operations team to digitally hand-off shift information

  • Work and communicate remotely

  • Easily allows a client to incorporate and implement any solution across an organization

  • Deploy in any region associated with Microsoft software, to comply with local privacy regulations - SmartHub is not limited to run in the U.S

  • Transform legacy, paper-based systems into fully digitized processes (i.e. permitting, shift logs, shift checklists)

  • Take all of the centrally located data and model it to show KPI's and other related business information to influence key decision-making  processes

SmartHub Apps

SmartHub features a collection of applications that benefit your facility, including:

  • OEE - Make smarter business decisions by understanding your efficiency and identifying bottlenecks - Connect to all your data, analyze it in real time, and visualize it anywhere in the world.  

  • Shift - Improve communication and collaboration between shifts while introducing compliance management.

  • PI - Leverage your PI System in your business workflows.

  • Permits - Manage the entire work permitting process for each of your company's sites.

  • Rounds - Use a mobile, offline-capable app to manage data entry for all field operations.

  • Batch - Add contextualized data to your batches.

  • Admin - Manage all SmartHub components setup and permissions.

  • Dispatch - Receive product requests from customers, order those deliveries and view invoices and reports all in one place.

  • Document Control - Store all documents with proper tagging and metadata management.

  • Assets - List all machinery information in one place that allows for better tagging, tracking, and data logging.

  • Project Estimating - Quickly and efficiently build out projects and estimates.

Connect More Data Sources

Is your data in a silo?

Why settle for less when you can have it all?

SmartHub Connectors can connect to hundreds of silo data sources, including:

  • SAP

  • JD Edwards

  • OSI PI and OSI PI AF

  • GE

  • Kepware

  • Matrikon

  • Rockwell Allen-Bradley

  • and many more!


SmartHub on Mobile

SmartHub gives you access to some of your most important functions on your smart phone or tablet.

With SmartHub you will always have the full production status picture regardless of where you are. It enables your operators to work with multiple machines and still be on top of any disruption with the help of alerts.

Accessibility

  • Fast, decisive action and real-time updates.

  • User-friendly mobile apps allow for quick updating.

Availability

  • SmartHub can be available on any smart device and in the hands of your team via smart phone, smart watches, and tablets.

  • With your communication plan stored in the Cloud, it is accessible from any location around the globe, at any time.

How can SmartHub benefit your industry?

SmartHub can keep you on track with your fixed plan for production in any industry, including:

Want to Learn More About SmartHub?

At Skylabs, we have been assisting businesses and small companies in adopting a digital mindset and business operation method since Power Apps was first released. The outcomes have been amazing, to say the least.

Are you ready to bridge the gap between business workflows with operational technologies?