TECH PERSPECTIVE AARON HAND | EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Big Data Analytics Optimizes HPP Equipment, Processes Springing in large part from its acquisition of HPP equipment provider Avure a few years ago, JBT’s iOPS cloud-based performance optimization platform helps to improve utilization, visibility, and control in HPP facilities. The software continues to evolve with more sensors, more data, and a view toward artificial intelligence.
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HEN JBT ACQUIRED Avure Technologies in early 2017, it gave the high-end equipment supplier for the food and beverage industry an entrée into the increasingly popular field of high-pressure processing (HPP). Avure was known for its HPP systems, and JBT could see the potential for market adoption of the cold pasteurization technology in the protein and liquid food sectors that it served. From Avure’s perspective, they gained access to some considerable resources—applied not only to equipment development but also to communication and data analytics tools that Avure had been working on, according to Tim Boyle, JBT Avure’s director of customer care and support. From that sprang iOPS, a cloud-based performance optimization platform that analyzes JBT equipment and processes in real time. The overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) software was created to improve utilization, visibility, and control in HPP facilities. Boyle explains how iOPS is evolving and why it’s important to HPP tolling customers and the food industry beyond. PFW: Tell me how iOPS came about. Why develop this OEE solution in-house? Boyle: We wanted to develop something in-house that could go across the entire JBT product line. JBT has been purchasing companies like Avure and growing through acquisition but also growing the base, so we’ve got different operating systems, different platforms, throughout all of our equipment. It made sense to the IT guys at the time to look at how we could use one base tool that can go across all the platforms to keep that control in-house. We look at iOPS as a dual-fold benefit for both the customer and for us. The customer can get real-time operational performance data—they can get alarm histories, they can get a lot of differ-
ent analytic data—brought back to them on a nice, clean dashboard. But also, we get to collect data on our machines on the backside with a cloud solution, so it allows us to keep looking at the overall picture of all of our equipment out there and start developing some different features along the way that can do things like predictive maintenance. And we can develop better tools so we can continue to improve performance for the customer along the way.
PFW: How do your customers feel about all of that data being fed to the cloud? Boyle: The nice thing about utilizing the cloud solution is we work with a lot of different security functions. We’ve got military-grade, airport-grade security functionality in the cloud. And the nice thing about utilization of the cloud vs. utilizing direct access into the machine is that the customer’s machine is transmitting data to the cloud, and we’re pulling the data and doing the business analytics in the cloud solution. So we’re not interfacing with the customer network. We’re also not interfacing directly into their equipment, so it protects the customer. We have some customers that are still wary of the data security. So the primary focus for us is making sure all data communications, all interfaces are completely secure to protect the customer. We also make sure all the data between the customer is proprietary—we don’t share that data with anybody. When we look at machines, we’re consolidating and we’re not pulling customer information into the consolidation; it’s just looking at machine data, so it’s random and anonymous. There’s no risk to their proprietary or customer information. www.profoodworld.com
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Tim Boyle, JBT Avure
| August 2021 |
PROFOOD WORLD
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7/22/21 9:40 AM
