To achieve some unexpected results you need to upgrade performance and technology. Highly quality control for concrete producers can make them unique in front of their competitors. Talking about the concrete industry, it is going through a technological revolution. People in the industry are talking about things like IoT (Internet of Things), automation, and cloud-connected systems. You might be finding these words new, but they are modern solutions to centuries-old problems.
One of the most important factors for any concrete producer is to control the quality of their perishable ready mix concrete as it’s transported from the plant to the job site. It’s a balancing act between minimizing cost—avoiding overdesign with excess cement, reducing rejected loads and tightening truck cycle times—and maximizing the volume of high-quality, consistent concrete. A research done by IDC and EMC found that the data being generated is predicted to reach 44 trillion gigabytes by 2020
There is a list of high tech solutions to address some of the above issues. Technological
Solutions for any concrete producer is very important if it comes at a budgeted value and gives them proper advantages.
An in-transit concrete management system is the perfect example of viable technology, which utilizes IoT, automation and the cloud to improve the concrete producer’s business.
An in-transit concrete management system is an IoT device because it translates the properties of ready mix concrete into quantifiable data, via truck-mounted sensors. With the help of technology, the system utilizes data to manage concrete mixing in the drum, pre-programmed w/c settings,
Let me explain this with an example – We will connect the system to automatically inject water or admixture into the moving mix, whenever the slump drops below target. The system is connected with the cloud so that all the data collected from the truck-mounted sensors is captured and analyzed over time for actionable readymix business improvements.
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Top benefits of installing an in-transit concrete management system
Equipment Monitoring
There are some highly efficient advantages connected with remote equipment monitoring. As predicted by Gartner analysts, around 526 million pieces of manufacturing equipment capable of communicating through sensor-enabled networks will be there by 2020. While out of this, 526 million, 90 million will be specifically designed for the mining industry.
There will be a cost associated with benefit while using remote equipment monitoring, according to Joy Global, an underground mining equipment manufacturer. Remote monitoring can be very useful to oversee the operations of big vehicles in the quarries and to report on key metrics such as fuel consumption per ton, tons per shift, or operating hours. Remote monitoring will give advanced technology and innovation with full safety.
Predictive maintenance
When determining the goal through analyzing equipment status and performance data as well as comparing the data set with manufacturing data such as the type of product being produced. Through this, a company can easily predict potential malfunction and need for maintenance. With the help of this, companies can proactively fix a time for maintenance so that it will least impact and avoid unexpected, costly downtime.
Predictive Maintenance has significantly lowered the cost for the cement industry and benefited in some highly effective manner.
Predictive quality
You have implemented the above steps for your company and now it’s time to move forward with the next step. The next step is predicting product quality, which involves all types of process data such as pressure and electricity and associating it to quality parameters. The sensors track specific characteristics of the product and allowing its real-time adjustments to control the resulting quality.
Predicting product quality is very important for a company and it can bring some amazing results.
Connected logistics
Logistics either be the biggest hurdle or opportunity. Collecting, comparing, and integrating data from multiple sources and using them to improve production yields and fleet management. The technology combines key production parameters such as weather, workforce status, and soil conditions to help management adjust operations. Increasing the yield per quarry on a large scale could have a significant, positive impact on bottom-line profitability.
Fleet management is very important to collect various data in the logistic field. Through this high advance technology, you can easily track fuel consumption, under various conditions, such as full load, no-load, idling, and much more. The company can also figure out the trips with the highest fuel consumption drill down to the details, then compare to fleet benchmarks to reduce activities leading to higher-than-normal costs
Various ready mix concrete equipment manufacturers actively testing these types of data-based metrics to improve their fleet operations.
Wrapping Up
The IoT is just bringing some unexpected opportunities and it is just a beginning. Technology and IoT can open the doors for the advance growth of your company. The above-discussed points make it clear. If you are a manufacturer of ready mix concrete or in the cement industry then this is perfect to invest in technology for some unexpected growth in the coming years.
All the best!