Since launching an SKF cloud in November 2012, the global network of SKF Remote Diagnostic Centres has been connected, bringing together global IT solutions and making all application data accessible in a single cloud-based system. SKF said this collective data “reflects a huge breadth of knowledge and experience in diagnosing and solving customer machinery maintenance issues in applications across all major industries worldwide”, including mining. SKF Asset Diagnostic Services can now leverage and share this knowledge, and at any time of day, SKF service engineers – located in timezones around the world – can be available to provide support in response to any problems that their remote diagnostics systems have identified.
“The new cloud-based solution allows us to monitor and diagnose not hundreds of thousands, but millions of machines. We already have half a million machines in the cloud. This shared knowledge helps us better serve our customers. In addition our cloud based software and services give our customers 24/7 access to an easy to understand diagnostics dashboard and regular reporting. And of course direct access to our knowledge network to collaborate with SKF machine health experts around the globe, day or night. In this way we can help our customer to increase machine availability while decreasing maintenance costs”, said Erwin Weis, Global Manager – SKF Asset Diagnostic Services. SKF Asset Diagnostic Services are described as being “particularly suitable” for applications in mining. Part of this offer includes “Software as a Service” (SaaS), which allows the customer to use the SKF cloud to host the data from their condition based maintenance program, reducing the cost of ownership and maintenance of expensive IT infrastructure. Additionally, diagnostic expertise can be requested on demand. Further extending the benefits is “Knowledge as a Service” (KaaS) where the SKF cloud and SKF Remote Diagnostic Centre network is used to establish or further improve a condition based maintenance program through partnering with SKF.