Steve Pflantz

Pflantz on IIoT-based sensor systems with existing controls systems

Feb 5, 2020

Steve Pflantz, PE is featured in Food Engineering’s “Employing wireless sensors without a clear goal could prove inefficient.”

Food manufacturers may find islands of automation and equipment in their facility as they make changes and improvements to hardware, equipment and software. In an effort to get things “talking” to each other and uncover useful information, some turn to a sensor-based IIoT network.

Pflantz weighs in on the challenges of working within existing systems:

“We have seen users with older systems that simply cannot provide the information they now want, as well as adequate systems that were not configured or set up to provide the needed information. The latter occurs when not enough focus is placed on the vendor’s design, and the client receives a solution that is not quite aligned with expectations."

“It comes down to whether the system is designed with the right instrumentation to measure or sense something, and then if the system is configured correctly to give the user the data in a usable format. The issue is that once a piece of equipment is built and installed, it becomes more costly and challenging to make modifications,” says Pflantz. “It is best to proactively design for what you need. If that does not happen, users are forced to deal with added cost and downtime of the equipment to make changes.”

Read the full article for data-driven considerations when deciding whether to implement an IIoT-based sensor system.