Industrial control and automation has revolutionised processing industries. Production lines are automated and data on performance readily available. However, if we don’t maintain and modernise the control infrastructure it can increase operating risks. Downtime due to old parts failing and not being able to replace them quickly is increasing.
Malone Group recently undertook an obsolescence study for Smurfit Kappa UK Corrugated where we surveyed 1200 plc systems across multiple sites, reviewed their spare parts stock and risk rated all their components to determine their business exposure. Following the analysis we proposed a practical replacement strategy (planned obsolescence) to ensure operational efficiency.
