Remote Trouble Telemedicine for

Just as it did for consumers’ willingness to visit their doctors over a video call, the pandemic signaled a shift in how food and beverage producers view remote troubleshooting from their OEMs. Sometimes it’s just what the doctor ordered.

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC made a big di erence in how consumers see the need to visit their doctors in person. By avoiding in-person visits, patients could protect themselves and/or others in the waiting room. And in many cases, in-person visits simply weren’t available.

Remote troubleshooting in food manufacturing shares many similarities with telemedicine. In much the same way, we’re trying to get our systems up and running again as quickly as possible. Both rely on remote communication technologies to diagnose and solve problems, and both require skilled professionals to navigate complex systems.

The technology to make connections between OEMs and their equipment residing on customers’ plant floors has been around for years. Willingness to use that technology, on the other hand, has been scant. However, many food and beverage producers found, during the pandemic, that there really was no other way to get the problems diagnosed. And since lockdowns have eased, remote troubleshooting continues to be essential for maintaining continuity in the face of disrupted supply chains, reduced sta ng, and other challenges.

Even before COVID, some food manufacturers had already seen the benefit of saving time and money when something went wrong with the equipment. A major multinational CPG, which asked not to be identifi ed because of the sensitivity of some of the information, has been using remote troubleshooting on its equipment for more than a decade.

“We needed a mechanism to have remote support because having the OEM come to the facility—to travel to every single issue—is very expensive,” says an automation engineer with the CPG. “And it’s not only expensive, sometimes it’s not timely. The OEM may not be available for, say, 48 hours. Whereas if they had a mechanism just to log in, we’ve seen many times that it can be resolved remotely.”

Tetra Pak is one large equipment maker driving more toward gaining connections to its systems at customer sites. With such a wide range of equipment, it helps to be able to access the right expertise wherever it resides in the world. “This possibility of having someone that is based in a di erent location supporting a customer with the right knowledge necessary for that demand, for example, is incredible because we are saving costs internally as well,” says Livia Marra, solution design manager, PSE Automation & Solutions, for Tetra Pak. “The customer is paying less for the service, but also the downtime is reduced, and it results in less waste.”

Tetra Pak also provides connectivity for sending analytical data to the cloud for predictive maintenance solutions, Marra adds.

Bring OT together with IT

One key piece of advice is to make sure that your IT and OT departments know how to play nicely together. That was an important reason the CPG was able to get remote support set up earlier than many companies in this industry.