Smart Industry 2015 shows how to transform manufacturing

Rory Smith of ThyssenKrupp Elevator describes how his company uses IIoT tools like Microsoft Azure to improve maintenance efficiency and reduce downtime during a panel discussion at Smart Industry 2015 in Chicago.
Photo credit: Tori Soper Photography

In his keynote address, Kevin Miller, Microsoft principal program manager for Azure, reported the connectivity, data collection and analysis behind IIoT are not new. "The difference is now it’s economical, with cheap radios and data storage in the cloud,” says Miller. “You can put sensors on things you wouldn't have thought of before."

During the event’s plenary panel discussion, Rory Smith, ThyssenKrupp Elevator’s strategic development director for the Americas, reported his firm puts data from many of its elevators on Microsoft Azure cloud-based service, which makes maintenance more efficient and reduces downtime. “We have 1.1 million elevators that we can hook up to the IoT, and 60% can be retrofitted,” says Smith. "We want to show customers that we do maintenance at the right time. IoT enables us do it, and lets us show our customers the same dashboards."

For more information about Smart Industry, visit www.smartindustry.com.