By: Rebecca Marquez – Director of Custom Research at PMMI
The COVID-19 pandemic was a learning experience for everyone. For craft beer and spirits producers, one of the most valuable lessons came from the necessity to rely on remote services in place of personal interaction to keep equipment running efficiently, maintain production, and update lines.
The experience proved remote services could deliver many benefits by enabling a quicker response when a problem arises, reducing costly downtime, optimizing machine/operation performance, and offsetting skills shortages.
As a result, even after pandemic-related restrictions on in-person visits ended, craft brewers/distillers have continued to request remote services and invest in the technology, which encompasses remote support, remote training, remote equipment monitoring, predictive maintenance, virtual factory acceptance tests, and online machine commissioning.
This commitment to remote services dovetails with other sectors in the consumer packaged goods industry, where a growing number of companies have adopted or plan to adopt remote services, according to Trends in Remote Services and Monitoring, a report published in January 2024 by PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies.
Remote Services
The most popular remote service is remote support, followed by remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, remote training, and virtual factory acceptance tests and online commissioning. Remote support involves remote troubleshooting, diagnostics, and repair and often can solve a problem more quickly and economically than an in-person visit from an OEM technician. The report notes that most software-based issues are already being addressed via remote support, and many mechanical failures also can be corrected remotely.
Remote monitoring extends remote support by equipping machines with sensors that monitor parameters such as temperature, pressure, and vibration, communicate this data via the Internet of Things, and rely on cloud computing for analytics.
Predictive maintenance works in tandem with remote monitoring. Analyzing the data captured by the digital monitoring tools makes it possible to predict asset behavior and perform repairs proactively. This reduces downtime and product loss, the major drivers pushing the implementation of predictive maintenance, according to another PMMI report, 2022 Challenges and Opportunities for Packaging and Processing Operations. Other benefits of adopting a predictive maintenance scheme include longer machine life and reduced parts requirements because replacements are installed as needed rather than on an arbitrary schedule.
Remote training can support onboarding and upskilling efforts, with instructor-led online sessions viewed as the most economical format. However, it should be noted that a significant number of craft brewers/distillers believe that a live instructor next to the machine delivers the most effective training. So, training is likely to remain a hybrid remote/in-person model. Nevertheless, despite some resistance from older workers, the hybrid model could shift toward the remote side with the evolution of augmented reality and the potential the interactive experience offers to bridge the gap between remote and in-person training.
As COVID-19 restrictions have faded, demand for virtual factory acceptance tests and remote commissioning has declined. Many craft brewers/distillers prefer to evaluate new equipment in person, especially if it is a complex or custom machine.
Barriers to Adoption
Despite the benefits, the adoption of remote services faces some hurdles, including:
• The cost of the service, especially when
retrofitting machines.
• Limited in-house IT skills to maintain and update systems.
• The likelihood of having to deal with multiple interfaces across plants and machines and
Cybersecurity risks.
Cybersecurity concerns remain high, but craft brewers/distillers have become less reticent about granting remote access as they have learned how to strengthen their IT networks and shifted to more secure access methods. The report predicts the use of externally managed secure networks and converged networks will grow at the expense of cell modem access and direct virtual private networks.
What’s Next?
The report concludes that remote services will continue to gain ground, particularly for support, troubleshooting, monitoring, and training. However, a hybrid remote/in-person model will remain because the advantages of an on-site presence sometimes still outweigh the time and cost savings associated with remote interactions.
Remote services capabilities will be on display at PACK EXPO International (Nov. 3–6, 2024, McCormick Place, Chicago), along with other beverage processing and packaging innovations. Ranking as the biggest packaging and processing event on the planet in 2024, the show will present 2,500 exhibitors spread across 1.3 million net square feet of floor space and foster idea-sharing among 40+ vertical industries. Highlights include free educational sessions, a myriad of networking opportunities, and solutions to address automation, production efficiency, sustainability, flexibility, and e-commerce needs, as well as other hot topics and trends. For more information, visit packexpointernational.com.
Rebecca Marquez was hired at PMMI in 2016 as a manager of business intelligence, responsible for the execution and analysis of PMMI’s internal market research projects. Ms. Marquez graduated from University of Wisconsin in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She has completed the Data Analytics Certification for University Georgia (2020) and the TLP 360 Degree Feedback Program for Leadership Development (2021).
