American conglomerate Honeywell has partnered with industrial machinery supplier Flowserve to develop Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions.
The collaboration apparently aims to help industrial customers make their operations safer, more efficient and more reliable. It will be part of Honeywell’s Inspire program – a customer development program for its IIoT ecosystem.
To achieve these aims, Honeywell’s capabilities in data consolidation, cyber and software development will be combined with Flowserve’s domain expertise. The idea is to create an IIoT ecosystem that could help customers solve what the companies call ‘previously unsolvable problems.’
Both companies want to create a simple-to-use infrastructure that enables their customers to capture and aggregate data before it can be analyzed. Customers should then benefit from having access to the domain knowledge of an ecosystem of vendors and process licensors.
Related: Emerson and Microsoft to offer new cloud-based IIoT solutions
According to Honeywell, having larger, consolidated data sets means manufacturers can apply higher analytics for more detailed insights, which can be scaled to meet the various needs of the organizations operations.
Honeywell and Flowserve – an effective partnership?
All going well, Honeywell and Flowserve will use the IIoT to help customers minimize unplanned shutdowns and safety risks while improving production and supply chain logistics. It’s an admirable aim but how can it be done?
“The key to an effective IIoT ecosystem is to have three things,” said Andrew Hird, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Process Solutions’ Digital Transformation business. “First, you need to have secure access to the data being collected; secondly the capability to analyze that data; and finally, you need domain knowledge to understand how to deploy information to benefit the operation.”
“We see this collaboration between Honeywell and Flowserve as beneficial to continuously improving how we serve our customers with the latest technology advanced software and analytics, and reliable services capabilities. Honeywell provides key infrastructure to collect and securely move data, while we embed decades of domain knowledge into predictive analytics for more business value, faster,” said Eric van Gemeren, vice president, research and development, Flowserve.
The two companies have previous experience of working together. Honeywell claims that its automation and controls technologies are used to manage data at 10,000 manufacturing sites around the world. Sites which are also home to some of Flowserve’s operations.
Related: HPE and PTC collaborate to tackle IoT data management