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 towns. One way to maximize the budgets these communities do have is through efficient remote monitoring and alarming systems that are IIoT based.

Towns and cities everywhere are increasingly challenged with issues of replacing water pipes, pumps and other infrastructure—sometimes after a huge failure. If a pump station unexpectedly stops, hundreds or even thousands of citizens may be without water for an extended period of time. Or if the quality of the incoming water changes, improper treatment may be injected, creating a number of possible dangers for citizens. Water management challenges are vast and only continue to amplify.

More and more utilities are finding the benefit of managing these pump and treatment stations with scalable, cloud-based systems like Emerson’s Zedi SaaS SCADA platform. Instead of the old, costly system of relying on drive-bys to check on pumps and facilities, our scalable, cloud platform can give managers peace of mind while reducing those costs all while keeping everyone's water safer.

Going digital, or Digital Transformation doesn't have to be riddled with complexity or long drawn out time-frames. In fact, it can really be easy, painless and fast and yet still make a huge positive impact on your business.

To stay competitive your company must focus on implementing new digital technologies into your operations to deliver more value to your customers and enable staff to do their job better and with less available internal resources.

To build a digital ecosystem for all stakeholders inside and outside your company means executing digital change activities. Emerson’s Zedi SaaS SCADA is a perfect partner on that journey. We serve various industries and can guide your Digital Transformation journey to your desired destination, and even autonomous operations.

Digital transformation projects usually require many complex steps. Each of these steps requires a well thought out, budgeted, and highly detailed plan. Who provides that plan will be your companies key to successfully reaching that desired destination for your operations on your time-frame and your budget requirements.

Many companies undervalue the importance of project management as a crucial component for project success. Instead the project(s) become everyone's baby; not one person. Strong leaders prefer to have one person accountable and responsible for the project as a whole; or as some leaders like to say 'one throat to choke' (I write that with a smile on my face and all due respect). This way everyone knows the exact time line, expectations and one person is in charge of the budget so it doesn't run wild.

The world moves pretty fast these days with all the constant change from every direction. To stay ahead of all the crazy it's important to consider all your options and then move quickly to implement your strategy into action.

It wasn't all that long ago many companies were faced with difficult decisions, and few of those difficult decisions are harder than layoffs. It's never an easy decision. But in a downturn, it’s a necessary evil to save the company as a whole—with great hope you can welcome those same talented people back when the inevitable upturn happens.

The hard truth is that before that upturn actually happens many of those talented people will have retired, switched career paths, started their own business or even traded their safety glasses in for sunglasses in a tropical paradise.

The water management industry is an asset concentrated, rate-restricted industry requiring informed decision-making to effectively  balance increased safety with capital investment and operational expenses. Capital resources for the water industries can make it difficult to meet on-going challenges like aging infrastructure, declining revenues, retiring experienced workers, and regulations.

One way water companies can face these challenges is to find effective ways to utilize their current assets to increase return on investment and increase safety. Digitally transforming operations will rely on better use of existing data coupled with new sensors, information integration, and data analytics.

In every industry, there's always room for improvement. More industries are looking to find the right data to make better business decisions and keep people and assets safer through automation and to find solutions that can change all areas of their operations for the better.

Water and wastewater treatment plants depend upon remote facilities' reliable and safe operation to continuously move waste throughout the service area to the main stations. By implementing a solution like Emerson's Zedi Cloud SCADA, many parts of managing and controlling remote sites not only become more streamlined, safer and cost effective but also more sustainable for the communities they serve.

Water management companies can make major safety and control gains with Emerson's Zedi Cloud platform that quickly and accurately compiles data from any digital monitoring hardware via gateways that support a variety of protocols.

We provide end-users with a web interface as well as the ability to push data to third-party platforms, allowing remote control and optimization via cloud-based data access.

Leveraging the flexibility of a cloud-based SCADA platform enables you to capture unlimited amounts of data from any digital monitoring hardware and transmit it quickly to the appropriate personnel so they can access and analyze the data in real-time to make faster, more informed decisions.

The water management industry continues to be plagued by multiple challenges, including aging infrastructure combined with an aging workforce that puts our water supply systems at even greater risk due to the loss of critical expertise and other hurdles like natural disasters including wildfires, floods, and drought that can significantly impact the safety of our water systems.

Water management operations will need to unleash the value of data by using analytics and other technologies to drive better decision-making, optimize and prioritize system investments, and drive cost efficiencies that create safer operations.