Interview with our CEO

Our CEO, Peter Gagg, has headed up MCP Consulting Group for over 30 years. This highly successful asset management consultancy has worked with some very high-brow customers, advising them on their asset maintenance strategies and training their staff to help them achieve World-Class business performance.

Why is it then that Peter decided to branch out and set up a whole new company, as opposed to incorporating this venture into his already well known business practice? Find out why in his own words…

Why did you set up Smart Asset Maintenance?

Smart Asset Maintenance was set up in response to the growing interest from our customers with respect to the use of technology and their requirement to increase the reliability of equipment.

Some of the issues identified in our latest Boardroom Report indicated that companies saw an increasing opportunity to use technology and to improve reliability engineering approaches. Also, the use of predictive maintenance tools using smart technology for documents, data, parts and online diagnostics was becoming very important to many of our clients.

The traditional preventive maintenance programmes in use today can now be complemented or even replaced by predictive maintenance. Predictive maintenance improves the performance of the equipment due to the inclusion of sensors, condition monitoring, predictive analytics and data analytics technologies. It's possible to provide remote technical assistance based on continuous monitoring and maintenance support from a distance. The decision-making ability can now be provided to optimise production processes, monitor and assess the health of the equipment before the failure occurs, optimise operational parameters and conditions to reduce energy consumption and deal with unexpected events. This enables staff involved in the production to make the most of the increasing amount of available information and data that can be collected, analysed and presented in real time.

Manufacturers require a comprehensive maintenance service for their production equipment in order to ensure high availability and to prevent downtime in critical phases of the production processes which can affect customer delivery times.

Following the initial hype and activity surrounding industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), we took time to understand our clients’ likely needs and assessed the available technology and solutions. We decided that now would be a good time to establish this new business, having identified the most appropriate partners.

Working with our partners, we have developed tools and technologies that are able to provide  a full spectrum of predictive maintenance, machine learning, data management and performance reporting.   

What do you wish to achieve?

Our aim is to provide a range of services and technologies which will support our clients to take advantage of the latest developments in technology and particularly Industrial Internet of Things so that they can further increase the reliability and productive output of their assets.

How will Smart Asset Maintenance help existing and new customers?

Smart Asset Maintenance will help customers improve reliability of assets, extend the life of their assets - hence reducing capital expenditure and reduce energy consumption. Perhaps even more importantly in these current times, to enable a more remote way of working.

With the use of smarter solutions, we can remove the need for regular inspections or preventive maintenance activity. With equipment that can be predicted to fail and by using the technology we have available, it becomes that much easier to remove the human element of inspection based maintenance.

How do you see the industry evolving over the next 5 years?

Over the next five years, industry will become more and more dependent on available technology. With the decrease in the availability of technical skills, it is evermore important that technology is used to its maximum advantage to make the best use of the shrinking technically qualified and industry experienced population.

The predicted growth in remote monitoring devices has been significant. When you think that in 2016 the worldwide demand was estimated to be $22.9 billion and in 2020 it was forecast to be $50 billion, this is an enormous increase over a relatively short period of time. A lot of that growth will not have been achieved so far, but that is the trend that has been seen within industry.

What will happen if iot in industry is not adopted by customers?

Companies that don't adopt IIOT will suffer in that, compared to their competitors, they will continue to deal with unexpected failures of their equipment, which leads to high levels of downtime. This costs money in terms of lost output, maybe even lost customers, but certainly lost sales.

Adopting the technology that is available and practical for their situation is, and will be, important to ensure that they remain competitive. However, one has to be careful that technology is not sought for the sake of the technology. There has to be a good business case made.

We have to remember that the principles of predictive maintenance have been around for many years. It has been very slow for some industries to adopt the technology or the principles, but now the technology is becoming an enabler to many companies. Adopting the technology is particularly important in companies that already have assets installed and don't want to have to spend lots of money hard-wiring pieces of equipment and sensors together into some central data collection system.

The newest technologies rely on the Internet. Minimal time is required to install, with no hard wiring or invasive techniques used on the equipment. With the latest sensor technology that we can offer, companies can be up and running within just 15 minutes.

What is your long term plan?

Our long term plan is to provide appropriate technical solutions to our clients’ problems with respect to the performance of their physical assets.

We will continue to offer leading edge technologies, with the aim of building the right solutions for the right time, at the right price. It is not our intention to compete with software or sensor providers, but to use the technology that is available from our trusted partners, working together to offer leading edge technology solutions.