If your production machines could talk, what would they tell you? Would they be annoying and over-dramatic with their problems, or would they be pretty chill, and just tell us what we need to know. I don't think anyone needs or wants drama from their production machines (or anyone else for that matter). I think a simple "compressor unit 3 in location10, needs bearing size X replaced within the next two days" would be good. No chit-chat about your vacation plans or how your BBQ turned out last weekend; none of that; just straight to the point and clearly tell us what they need and when they need it by would be great.

You and your dedicated staff have all worked very hard to get your production levels to exactly where you want them to be and that's 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 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 parent's 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 its 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.

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.

The stories of budget struggles for municipal water systems seem to grow every week. Overwhelming residential growth on one side, countered by budget-constrained neglect of systems on the other side plague many small to medium sized towns. One way to maximize the budgets these communities do have is through efficient remote monitoring and alarming systems that are IIoT based and cloud-native, but what does that really mean to the operation?

The cost of distractions in life is high. What can often seem like a minor distraction can have a giant impact on life; a distracted drive to work could cause a crash, distracted while reading email could cause you to miss an important request from the boss, or being distracted while spending time with family could result in a loved one that doesn’t feel heard anymore, or think you care.

When it comes to your operations distractions can cause just as much havoc and loss. Distractions cause the risk of safety of people; and the environments around you, and the health of the bottom line. Those distractions could be losing your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. Without your eye on the prize you could be risking the sustainability of your organization; here today - gone tomorrow happens all too often these days.

Keeping your operations continuously running smoothly is no small task; but especially if it involves remotely located assets that are hundreds, even thousands of miles from where you work on a daily basis. You don't have the same amount of talented skilled people to be sending them all over the countryside for no good reason anymore. You need to know exactly what's going on, and where before you can even think about scheduling one of your valuable resources to hit the road, jump on a flight or work all that overtime to get to the asset in need.

You've probably encountered the pain of trying to set up something that you thought was going to be easy and only take a few minutes. It stated it was 'easy' to set up, and of course you're pretty bright so how hard could it really be? And then you open the box... You see more wires, parts, and pieces stuffed in there than SpaceX probably uses to build rockets.

Your heart sinks a bit, your blood pressure instantly rises, and you can feel your eyes trying to make sense of the clutter and not knowing what to focus on. Your brain tells you to quickly close that box, and run screaming from the room!

I'm betting it's safe to say you've had enough of the endless stream of singular reports piling on your desk. With a single report from one end of the operation paper clipped to another report from the middle, you’re constantly sorting everything manually, or hand-entering it into several separate databases. Maybe some of your reports are from yesterday and others are from last week. Maybe the databases are scattered on computers or servers in several locations.

How can you make good (or any) business decisions or locate issues when everything is scattered, missing, in the wrong pile, stapled to the wrong report or accidentally tossed out?

Without a unified report you may not be able to see how a small issue in one area can lead to a big need down the line—until it’s too late. You need a single source for sensor data up and down the line, as it happens?