Belden experts create a tailored solution to help a 95-year-old manufacturing plant eliminate production blind spots, gain OEE visibility and transform machine maintenance

Through its collaborative Customer Innovation Center, Belden—a leading global supplier of network and digitization solutions—is empowering industrial plants around the world to build solid foundations for operational efficiency and leverage the power of real-time data.

To help a global manufacturer improve performance and capacitance at one of its oldest plants—and take the first step toward Industry 4.0—experts from Belden’s Customer Innovation Center followed a three-step data engineering process to find creative and tailored ways to visualize workflows in near-real-time and collect overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) data to analyze and improve machine performance.

A disparate mix of control technology had been deployed throughout the manufacturing process over the years, creating unique digitalization challenges.

“This 95-year-old plant was like a museum of legacy machines and technology,” explains Sylvia Feng, global director of the Digital Automation Consulting group, part of Belden’s Customer Innovation Center. “Various PLC brands and industrial protocols were used, along with various vintages of machinery and generations of control technology. This made talking to all PLCs and machines a challenge.”

Belden’s Customer Innovation Center consultants—who have real-world experience in transforming outdated plants into modern production environments—worked alongside the operations team to identify challenges, define goals and KPIs, and design, develop and validate the performance of a tailored and unified solution.

This solution provides the insights needed to run the plant more efficiently and effectively by creating visibility into all critical OEE metrics, including availability, downtime and production. The solution also democratizes that valuable information to make it available all in one place to everyone who needs it. In addition, it allows the production team to monitor and respond to detected operational anomalies and defects in equipment so they can be addressed before failure occurs.

Machine operators and supervisors now track and understand availability, performance and quality in near-real-time—even those who are new to plant operations. Live OEE data reveals which lines are running well, which lines need attention and which ones are down—as well as the reasons for downtime.

The plant has also been able to shift from time-based to predictive maintenance. Operators know immediately whether a specific parameter (vibration, temperature, current, voltage, etc.) on a machine is behaving differently. If so, the issue can be addressed right away before failure occurs.

As a result of Belden’s ability to unleash the power of real-time OT data, the plant is experiencing double-digit productivity improvements along with extremely conservative estimates of at least half a million dollars in savings per year.

“We transformed this black box into a glass box,” explains Feng. “This way, their operators and supervisors can see what’s going on at the plant and prioritize and troubleshoot based on near-real-time data.”

The first Belden Customer Innovation Center opened in Stuttgart, Germany in 2021, followed by the opening of a second location in Santa Clara, California in 2022. This year, Belden will open Customer Innovation Centers in Chicago, Illinois; Bangalore, India; and Shanghai, China.

To learn more about Belden’s Customer Innovation Center and how its experts helped this global manufacturer improve visibility and maintenance to fuel better business performance, visit https://www.belden.com/Resources/Case-Studies/Double-Digit-Productivity-Improvements-through-Beldens-Customer-Innovation-Center

About Belden

Belden Inc. delivers the infrastructure that makes the digital journey simpler, smarter and more secure. We’re moving beyond connectivity—from what we make to what we make possible through a performance-driven portfolio, forward-thinking expertise and purpose-built solutions. With a legacy of quality and reliability spanning 120-plus years, we have a strong foundation to continue building the future. We are headquartered in St. Louis and have manufacturing capabilities in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. For more information, visit us at www.belden.com; follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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