A Moroccan Leading Use Case for Predictive Maintenance, IoT and Industry 4.0

Abstract

As part of our research, predictive maintenance is acquiring more attention through time, making it one of the most interesting topics and undeniable use cases when discussing advanced Industrial Internet of Things, Industrial Big Data and advanced data analytics combined with machine learning applications. Throughout the years, this new fresh market is expected to follow an alarming exponential growth trend with a 39% annual rate. The latter could only be achieved under the existence of well-structured organizations that aim to offer high quality maintenance monitoring and control through a combination of state-of-the-art tools and technologies. Whilst big players already exist in the market and managed to gain considerable attention in Industry 4.0, we cannot deny the exclusive establishment of startups and novel units operating in the same field of expertise. The aforementioned enterprises might be considered as freshmen and novices whilst being independent entities in the pool of enterprises, but we cannot ignore the fact that these micro-organizations were established by maintenance and reliability experts that have acquired a priceless know-how and expertise throughout the years. These startups offer robust and highly innovative hardware, software solutions in addition to a plethora of services for predictive maintenance, including platforms and analytics making them real players introducing a new competition in the market. OCP Maintenance Solutions is a newly-established situation created as a business unit to meet the internal maintenance needs of the OCP Group. The key objective and motivation behind establishing such service is to create a remote center of excellence in maintenance, based on wireless data collected combined with OCP’s expertise as a global player specialized in the mining, refining, processing, manufacturing, commercialization, marketing and development of phosphate rock, phosphoric acid and fertilizers. Today, the business unit established itself as an operational and independent unit providing sophisticated predictive maintenance services through a proprietary predictive analytics and IIoT-based platform in addition to multiple products and services including but not limited to: - Tailored digitalized desktop applications for maintenance and reliability - Training and e-learning solutions (i.e. development of bespoke serious games) - Out-of-the box and highly tailored mobile applications to serve diversified end-users and client’s needs