The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) presents numerous opportunities for market growth and cost savings that Biesse Group is keen to capture. By implementing connected asset management across its industrial machinery, the company wanted to improve operational efficiencies, improve customer experience, reduce costs, and open up new revenue streams such as machine usage analysis and production process optimization. Biesse Group’s customers are interested in new digital capabilities, and the company took the lead in developing a range of services that could help improve the performance of its customers’ machinery and overall productivity.

The next industrial revolution is here, and Biesse Group wanted to seize the opportunities it offers. With Accenture’s partnership, the manufacturer pioneered an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solution to build new, robust aftermarket services for its machines.

Biesse Group is a global leader in manufacturing technology for processing wood, glass, stone, plastic and metal. It chose Accenture to help build the business case, operating model and IIoT cloud-based solutions over a five-year contract.

The IIoT connected asset management solution was built using the Accenture Connected Platforms as a Service (CPaaS) IoT platform on Microsoft Azure.

To make this transformation, Biesse Group chose Accenture’s Industry X.0 and Connected Asset Management for Manufacturing capabilities. Together they designed an IIoT operating model, business case, solution and roadmap using the Accenture Connected Platforms as a Service (CPaaS) on a Microsoft Azure IoT platform. The platform’s flexible architecture and preconfigured IoT services enabled the team to reduce the overall program complexity and duration using pre-built and pre-configured architectures, technologies and APIs.

This enabled Biesse Group to deploy a pilot solution and mobile app to clients after only five months, followed by a full rollout. The platform is available on more than 15 Biesse machine models encompassing different areas like Wood and Glass & Stone.

The first set of services includes preventive maintenance alerts, machine management, manufacturing events analysis and remote diagnostics, and remote software distribution. Biesse’s Service Department receives notifications about machine performance, enabling them to proactively contact customers to pre-empt or handle machine outages. Sensors and devices on the machines produce in-depth key performance indicator and usage analytics. This information is displayed on easy-to-view dashboards using Microsoft Power BI data visualization on mobile devices. The performance reports are periodically shared with customers, and the machine’s technical documentation can be accessed via the app.

Biesse’s customers use a pay-per-use model and customize the services they receive from machine alerts. They also benefit from advanced services like in-depth machine analytics that improve overall equipment effectiveness and productivity. The IIoT platform has been released to approximately 25 countries globally, including wood, glass and stone subsidiaries; dealers; and end customers.

Accenture is investing significantly in Industry X.0 capabilities like the Industry X.0 Innovation Center in Modena. The Center hosts a real manufacturing plant in the heart of Italy’s manufacturing region. It consists of a shopfloor with real working machines where companies can use connected devices and collaborative ecosystems to explore solutions for improving efficiency and productivity, transforming operating models, and developing new business opportunities.