RS offers an extensive range of Industry 4.0 technologies designed
to help energy and utility organizations overcome pervasive
challenges, including downtime, skilled labor shortages, and
inefficiencies, and achieve ambitious modernization
goals.
FORT
WORTH, Texas, Aug. 14,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- RS, a trading brand of RS
Group plc (LSE: RS1), a digitally enabled global distributor of
product and service solutions for industrial customers, offers an
extensive range of Industry 4.0 technologies designed to help
energy and utility organizations overcome pervasive challenges and
achieve ambitious modernization goals.
Operating challenges including downtime, skilled labor
shortages, and inefficiencies affect every industrial market
segment, and their cumulative effects can be disastrous. For
example, the average manufacturer experiences 800 hours of
equipment downtime a year, which costs industrial organizations
almost $1.5 trillion a year —
roughly 50% more than it did in 2019–2020 — due to spiraling
inflation and production lines running at higher capacities. In
addition, the manufacturing skills gap in the U.S. is projected to
result in 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030, which could cost the
industry more than $1 trillion in
2030 alone.
In response, a growing number of industrial organizations are
embracing Industry 4.0 trends — ranging from electrification,
digitalization, and automation to remote condition monitoring and
predictive maintenance — by integrating smart technologies, such as
smart meters, IIoT sensors, asset management solutions, and
industrial data communications solutions. While still undeniably
innovative, many of these smart Industry 4.0 technologies are
rapidly maturing and widely proven to help industrial organizations
with even the harshest operating environments achieve significant
process optimization, efficiency, productivity, quality, safety,
and profitability improvements that can mitigate the impacts of
these persistent challenges.
However, although downtime, skilled labor shortages, and
inefficiencies affect every sector in the industrial market, the
intricacies of each sector — ranging from goals, investments, and
consumer demands to environmental hazards and industry standards —
influence the impact of these ubiquitous challenges as well as the
Industry 4.0 trends and technologies best suited for overcoming
them. For example, the Industry 4.0 trend towards electrification
is having a tremendous impact on the energy and utilities sector,
as it will have to both follow suit to stay sustainable — adopting
and investing in renewable energy to meet growing market demand —
as well as significantly increase supply to electrify the massive
number of processes in virtually every market sector that are
transitioning to greener electric power from other energy
sources.
Because of this, the energy and utilities sector is actively
embracing Industry 4.0 trends and heavily investing in enabling
technologies that can ready its aging infrastructure for the
monumental modernization and expansion tasks that lie ahead and
execute them with the workforce available.
RS offers an extensive range of Industry 4.0 technologies
designed to help energy and utility organizations overcome these
pervasive challenges and achieve ambitious modernization goals.
Popular solutions include:
Remote condition monitoring solutions, like smart
meters and sensors equipped with IO-Link communication
capabilities, that help energy and utility companies gather more
actionable data and access, analyze, and leverage it more
efficiently. Benefits for energy and utility companies include
sparing employees from traversing sprawling facilities and
installations rife with safety hazards, freeing available employees
up for more complex tasks, reducing labor costs, and supporting
predictive maintenance strategies that eliminate unplanned
downtime. These solutions also enable smart grids capable of
managing and balancing the intermittent flow of renewable energy
and integrating it into the electrical grid, which boosts energy
efficiency and reliability, makes renewable energy more accessible,
which in turn helps fuel adoption, and can even help reduce energy
costs. Examples include the JN2201 inclination sensor from ifm
efector and SICK AHS/AHM36 IO-Link absolute encoders.
Asset management solutions, like PLCs and edge and cloud
computing systems. PLCs, for instance, have long been the crux of
automated process systems — using data received from I/O modules
and systems to send programmed responses based on those sensor
inputs to output devices capable of affecting the process, such as
pumps, heaters, and actuators. I/O modules typically transmit
information from a single I/O point to a PLC, while I/O systems
typically feature higher channel densities and additional features,
like diagnostics, ideal for more complex application environments,
and both — along with PLCs — are widely available in ultra-rugged
form factors well suited for use in harsh energy and utility
application environments. Examples include the Siemens Simatic ET
200SP MultiFieldbus I/O system and Advantech ADAM-6000 Series
remote I/O modules.
Industrial data communications products, like switches,
gateways, routers, and protocol converters, which facilitate the
secure, real-time transmission of data that fuels optimization,
productivity, efficiency, quality, safety, and profitability
improvements and are critical enablers for all these other advanced
Industry 4.0 technologies. Examples include Phoenix Contact's FL
1000 Series unmanaged switches, Red
Lion's FlexEdge modular IIoT gateways, and Moxa's EDR-810
Series industrial routers.
"RS is well experienced in helping energy and utility
organizations navigate the complexities of industrial market
challenges, ranging from downtime and skilled labor shortages to
inefficiencies," said Mark Russell,
Technical Application Support Manager at RS. "We help
organizations embrace Industry 4.0 trends — including
electrification, digitalization, automation, remote condition
monitoring, and predictive maintenance — and implement
advanced Industry 4.0 technologies, ranging from sensors and IIoT
networks to asset management solutions and industrial data
communications products. In addition, our experienced customer
support — which spans the design, build, and maintenance phases —
is backed by the breadth and depth of our product offerings and
enhanced by our omnichannel ease of doing business."
For more information about the RS portfolio of energy and
utility sector solutions, including renewable energy solutions,
please visit the embedded links throughout this article and our new
three-part RS Expert Advice article series, "Overcoming Industrial
Market Challenges With Industry 4.0." The series
addresses Industry 4.0 trends and technologies helping
industrial market sectors eliminate unplanned downtime and overcome
skilled labor shortages in Part 1, the impact of Industry 4.0
trends and technologies on the energy and utilities sector and its
ambitious modernization goals in Part 2, and leveraging Industry
4.0 trends and technologies in the energy and utilities sector to
overcome pervasive challenges and achieve modernization goals in
Part 3.
For assistance selecting, procuring, deploying, and maintaining
products that can help improve the optimization, efficiency,
productivity, quality, safety, and profitability of your energy and
utilities industry assets, please contact your local RS
representative at 1.866.433.5722 or reach out to our technical
product support team.
About RS in the Americas
In the Americas region, RS
stocks more than 250,000 industrial and electronic products from
more than 700 trusted suppliers. These solutions cover categories
extending from automation and control equipment to interconnect,
passive, active, and electromechanical components and include more
than 80,000 high-quality, competitively priced RS
PRO products. For more information, please visit
https://us.rs-online.com or connect with us via social media
on Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and YouTube.
About RS Group
RS Group plc is a digitally enabled
global distributor of product and service solutions for industrial
customers. We help 1.1 million customers across the world satisfy
their maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) needs safely and
sustainably. We stock more than 750,000 industrial and associated
electronic products sourced from over 2,500 leading suppliers,
enhancing customer experience, driving operational excellence and
simplifying the supply chain at every step.
Through our great people and increased use of technology, we
provide industrial MRO solutions that seamlessly combine services,
products, and digital — essential for the successful running of our
customers' businesses. Operating sustainably through efficient,
physical processes and digital infrastructure, the way we support
our customers forms part of our ongoing purpose to make amazing
happen for a better world.
RS Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange with stock
ticker RS1 and in the year ended 31 March 2024 reported
revenue of £2,942 million.
For more information, please visit
https://www.rsgroup.com/ or connect with us on
LinkedIn or X (Twitter).
Image Download:
RS Industry 4.0-IIoT in
Energy-Utilities PR.jpg (551KB)
Editorial Contact & Media Inquiries:
Erica Goode, RS Director of Marketing – U.S. and
Canada
Erica.Goode@rsgroup.com
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