Every market heat these days is hot with pressure. We hear the same thing from every direction - Successful production needs technology that can provide speed and stronger efficiencies that deliver on-going return - this is a must have, and no longer just a 'nicety'. These same demands are only growing every day for most industries to remain producing positive outcomes and hitting their always increasing targets and goals.

It's no wonder; with a lack of skilled labor, higher costs of everything, and constant pressures from every angle that are taking on a new level of intensity - it's more important now than ever before that you get it right from the start; and quickly. That said; we also hear it can be a daunting task and super confusing to figure out what technology and operational changes will actually provide results today, and tomorrow with growing return for sustainability and continued production gains. It can quickly escalate into the most advanced game of chess you've ever played.

You may have oil and gas production sites scattered from the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans and offshore in the beautiful, but super remote seas around the globe. Collecting and consolidating that remotely located data is one thing—pushing it back out to your varied end-users in an actionable and analyzed format may be a whole, more complicated other story.

We've all heard someone, at some point tell us 'it's easier to keep a current customer happy than it is to find a new customer.' There is giant truth to this statement. You certainly want your customers to be with you for years and years - you've built relationships with them, know their kids names, gone above and beyond to get their challenges solved, have had many laughs with them, and helped them in every possible way you are able. But, then one day; Johnny Slick walks through the door with a new start-up company that is offering a much lower price, tons of empty and unproven promises, and loads of fluffy-meaningless words of what the new Johnny Slick product offers that yours may not; and just as fast as a movie theater clearing out when someone screams 'fire' -  your long-standing customer is gone.

Customer loyalty is everything to your ultimate OEM business sustainability and success. Their loyalty can literally make or break your entire business. But how to attract and retain your end customers isn't always as easy, or something you feel like you have control over because in the market today competition is tough, options are plenty, and people simply expect more from your business than ever before.

You and your amazing employees have worked hard to build your OEM business and it shows in your long-term success and happy end customers. Now that you have created processes that are tried and true to your business model and fully support your company sustainability, you may be thinking its a good time to think about how you can take it all to the next level through building out stronger efficiencies and better work-flows that will simply day-to-day operations and also present your people with the right data they need to make better, faster decisions.

You and your dedicated staff have all worked very hard to get your production levels to exactly where you want them to be - not an easy task, and certainly not an easy one to keep rolling without loads of serious challenges. Sure, every company has obstacles and set-backs here and there; but when it comes to production - one tiny hiccup can result in several factors of safety, profitability and even your organizations long-standing sustainability.

It's no secret that production downtime can be significant and negatively impact your operations very quickly.

These challenges happen with the blink of an eye - and cause long-standing times of downtime, lost profits and serious safety impacts. Here are five keys to prevent production downtime to help you remain up and running while keeping your people safer, profit margins up and maintaining your operations for a life-time of strong returns for generations.

When you were a child you were probably encouraged to share things like your toys, games, or your birthday cake - but imagine if you weren't taught to share at all; you would just eat the entire birthday cake yourself - Yikes!

That same child version of you was also hopefully taught what 'not' to share - important things like your parents bank account pin, or your mom's email password.

When you think about how your operational data should (or should not) be shared with other applications to make your overall tech stack work to it's fullest potential for your company; and just how easy it is (or isn't) to share the right data to the correct applications you quickly realize how important data sharing is and the potential impact it can have on your business outcomes.

We've all been there - called a support number for a product or service and got to the point where you know for a fact your blood pressure is at a boiling point because not only did the person not answer your question with anything but what was on their 'script' in front of them, but made YOU jump through all their hoops before giving you that scripted, and completely useless response. To say this is 'infuriating' is a giant understatement, and makes you lose faith in all humanity because it seems no one can think for themselves or get the slightest bit creative on what might help you in your time of need.

Thankfully, some people, and companies actually get what the word 'support' means and take the right steps to enable their people to understand what their products can 'do'. Those same, very carefully chosen people that are placed in support roles hold a strong desire to help their customers and are willing to be relentless in how they discover ways to help solve problems. Those rare people are the one's that aren't afraid to put ideas into action and are even exceptionally polite about it through the process. Imagine that - Faith in humanity saved in a single, easy, helpful, dare I even say enjoyable phone call.

Many people enjoy knowing every little detail about something, even if it doesn't really correlate directly to them. All the power to them! Personally, I like people to get right to the point; tell me what I need to know - Don't dance around what you're trying to say, or give me so much info it makes my head spin.

Please, please, please just be clear and concise.

I'm pretty sure companies and their staff also want their data straightforward and easy to understand. Not such a large amount of data that drowns them with every tiny detail that isn't relevant, or actionable. Sometimes too much data can become pretty much useless because it would take you hours to filter through it all to find the data you actually do need.

When someone mentions something like 'cloud-native IIoT' do your teeth start to clench in stress and you immediately begin to search for your antacids to ward off the quickly approaching heartburn that comes with the topic? I hear you, understand your anxiety and totally feel your pain because I've been there many times before.

That's until I started thinking of IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) differently; what it really 'means' to us, the humans of the world. How it can actually help makes our lives better in several ways; like increasing the safety of many very dangerous situations, how it can even prevent terrible problems before they even happen and how it can make companies be more profitable so more people keep their jobs and prices don't over-inflate for the end buyers.

I think it's safe to safe that many of us have experienced different times in our lives that we knew we didn't have all the information; times when we simply knew there was more to the story, or something missing that we should know in order to make an informed decision. Some people call it intuition, others say it's a 'hunch' - call it whatever you like, but either way having that feeling is certainly frustrating at best; potentially even life-threatening at worst.

When it comes to your operations, I hope you don't get that feeling very often - But if you do then we can help.