Cloudleaf Perspectives - Top 5 Tips

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5 Tips to Kick-Start your Enterprise Asset Tracking and Workflow Management Project. An inside look at the concerns facing enterprises looking to digitally transform their asset ecosystems.

For some time now, industry players have been touting the benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT) and how it helps enterprises achieve high productivity while lowering TCO and risk. But with all the press, it’s easy to see how manufacturers are getting lost in the message. We decided to put together some tips that help enterprises ride the digital transformation wave and build high-availability asset ecosystems that unlock the benefits from operating lean-manufacturing organizations.

1. Actualize LeanManufacturing Principles

Getting to the point where you’re running a lean-manufacturing operation takes effort, planning and buy-in across the enterprise. It’s all about aligning people, work-flows and assets with the goal of minimizing waste and focusing on only value-added tasks. It’s also about timing and engaging workers and capital only when needed. In a whitepaper, IBM describes this lean philosophy as a “flow and pull effect” that depreciates the use of siloing operations within departments or functions, in favor of creating purposeful value streams and asset groups. Cloudleaf Sensor FabricTM is an intelligent mesh of inter-connected sensors, gateways and cloud services that gather real-time granular data and metrics from

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thousands of distributed assets to help enterprises reach this point of flow and pull. By eliminating wasteful processes, value-creating work-flows, and seamless flows. This results in production activities that only trigger when there is customer demand, rather than manufacturing based on a forecast. And “customers” don’t necessarily need to be external partners, distributors, or VARs, but, in larger facilities, might also include other internal business units. The name of the game is aligning internal production output with external demand curves. Cloudleaf offers adaptable, flexible and extensible real-time and continuous asset tracking and work-flow management solution that help enterprises reconcile supply and demand.

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2. Adopt the Latest Future-Proofed Tech

Technology is about enablement. Everything relies on it, and when properly utilized, it has the ability to unlock profitability and growth. Technology in the world of manufacturing is increasingly about the IoT. This means that connecting, managing and securely funneling data from large numbers of remote assets to cloud applications that help operation managers efficiently orchestrate workflows materials and assets. Cloudleaf believes that for IoT asset management solutions to be sustainable and value-added, they must, first and foremost, be based on technology that is robust, interoperable, cost-effective and offers high-availability functioning. Cloudleaf Sensor FabricTM leverages the latest BLE technologies to create a secure connected mesh of intelligent endpoints sensors, zone sensors, gateways and cloud applications. High-value assets such as hand-held

3. Achieve Pervasive RealTime Visibility

Imagine a world where, at a tap of a finger you instantly know the location, condition of workflow status at every critical step across your enterprise. Next, imagine a mesh of hundreds of sensors and gateways busily streaming real-time data from your assets to cloud applications, giving you total visibility right on your mobile. And imagine this solution is not only cost-effective but purpose-built for your industry, your needs, and requires only a few hours to implement. Well, now there’s need to imagine, Cloudleaf has made this a reality. It seems logical, that if something has value or is important, it must be

4. Slick, Streamline and Simplify Workflows


The implications of connecting and managing assets real-time and on a massive scale are far reaching. From an inventory standpoint, up until now, just-in-time (JIT) efficiency represented goal, but never a reality. With a lot of investment and planning, many enterprises have come close to achieving near-perfect production work-flows but without pervasive, real-time visibility over their assets, operations managers have

testing tools, sub-assemblies or reusable containers of inventory, each generates a unique digital fingerprint with location and contextual condition data -- such as temperature, shocks and vibrations. Using a patented spatial engine and workflow cloud applications, operation managers can easily determine the location of an asset or groups or assets, zoom-out for a macro view of their operations and gain actionable insights. Dashboards provide exception alerts, notifications, metrics, trends, analytics and KPIs related to inventory, product quality, audit and regulatory compliance. And an extensive library of APIs, SDKs and pre-built connectors enable seamless integration with existing enterprise systems, including ERP, MRP, MES and analytics. The result is finely tuned use of staff resources, materials and assets based on a foundation of proven future-proof Cloudleaf technologies.

safeguarded continually and at every point. This includes finished goods, commoditized inventory or unique assets such as sub-assemblies or semifinished goods that are used at some point in the fabrication or assembly process. Cloudleaf enables enterprises to fully realize this simple principle and leave behind legacy asset and material management methods such as manual records, barcode scanning and even RFID. Cloudleaf Sensor FabricTM solutions are reliable, scalable and easy to deploy, understand and use. The result is simple, productive operations and assets that are at the right place at the right time, every time.

had to fall back on approximations and forecasts. Data is the life-blood of any manufacturing operation. But creating comprehensive data-lakes require steady streams of relevant and timely data from and equally comprehensive collection of assets. This is sum-total approach that is only beneficial if every critical asset in the value-chain is connected and managed. In the past this might have had a limiting effect on the viability of asset


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management solutions but given Sensor FabricTM’s zero-implementation footprint we are able to ensure rapid go-to-value in a cost-effective and unobtrusive way. This is due to the ease in which we’re able to outfit even the largest industrial complexes with a mesh of intelligent sensors and gateway that enable enterprises to bring about

their fully connected asset ecosystems. Cloudleaf Sensor Fabric unlocks the promise of JIT and by making it a reality, obviates the cost and risk associated with lost or misplacement tools, upstream production delays, and inefficient allocation of human and capital resources.

A Real-World Example: In the case of Cloudleaf’s health & life sciences customers, finely tune work-flows directly affect the ability to safely and quickly transport biological samples between labs. Every second counts for patients who are waiting for diagnosis and treatments, and the cost associated with compromised biological samples is huge. Cloudleaf Sensor FabricTM provides real-time visibility and ambient temperature monitoring of blood samples as they move through each stage of the FDA regulated medical diagnostics processes. By controlling dwell-times and keeping samples within temperature thresholds is essential to maintaining the viability of samples, reducing waste and improving patient outcomes. FAC TO RY Cloudleaf Gateway TM

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5. Shift to a ProActive Operating Model


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Productivity results from building highly efficient operations but also from avoiding problems that can quickly tangle up work-flows, derail productions schedules and severely impact output. Increasingly, enterprises are adopting a proactive corporate cultures in the strategic and operations planning. From an asset perspective, this proactive mindset is manifested in a collection of predictive and prescriptive methodologies that help operation manager to accurately assess the probability of equipment failure and take preemptive measure to mitigate downtime. But as before, asset management platforms require access to relevant and timely asset data in order to generate precise analytical forecasts. Cloudleaf Sensor FabricTM provides

access to critical equipment assets, gathering real-time operational metrics for use in Cloudleaf condition monitoring analytics models. These assets may include high-value hand-held testing, calibrations or assembly tools, fixed manufacturing and packaging systems, loaders, forklifts, and other equipment on the move. Operation mangers are able to configure variety of rules, event and triggers like notifications, alerts and state changes that help them quickly resolve condition related exceptions. Cloudleaf’s powerful technology, help enterprises sidestep the cost and risk associated the service and equipment disruptions resulting in safe, productive operations.
