Comment Re:uh huh... (Score 3, Insightful) 50
$9 million in savings in a large production plants is shit. They have single machines that cost more than that. To take a gamble on a large change like this, the savings need to be insane. Cut my costs in half and it might be worth the risk. Saving $9 million when my costs average $300 million and, yes... that's nice... but its not worth the risk of new tech.
Actually $9million is $9million regardless how how you cut the pie. Just because a business turns over several orders of magnitude more means they should stop factoring in potential savings as *small* as $9million?
I ask you, what is a gamble? How are you gambling when you monitor your equipment? What is the risk when it goes wrong? Back to potential $9million outages? Oh calamity!
The only reason people are up in arms about this is because someone used the phrase "Internet of Things". If this article was started with "Lean Six Sigma", "Kaizen", or "a Continuous Improvement Project" no one would bat an eye. I am a reliability engineer and creating this type of monitoring is my day to day activities. Sometimes they pay off really well, sometimes they produce no benefit and we wasted a few $100k, but all of a sudden when someone says it's an "Internet of Things" project rather than project everybody shouts about risk?
Get a grip. Oh and I work for a plant that turns over approximately $4bn in product annually, yet if I could save $9m I guarantee there would be prizes, parades, and all sorts of untold honours directed my way. Never under-estimate how hard it is to squeeze the last bit of financial efficiency out of a place.