DC Software Puts Actionable Intelligence at Your Fingertips

Today, nearly every aspect of distribution center operations can be connected — from workers and automation to robots and sensors. And with the rise of DC connectivity, many companies are capturing an untold amount of operational data in a cloud database. Within this data lies answers to a variety of operational issues — if you have the analytics and software tools required to access and interpret this information.

With decades of experience providing industrial automation and analytics software for process control industries, Honeywell Intelligrated is uniquely positioned to deliver deep operational insights from The Connected Distribution Center industrial internet of things (IIoT) platform.

Combining machine-level sensors, smart controllers and connected devices, The Connected Distribution Center gathers data from key inputs to deliver vital information on asset health and facility performance in real time. And with proven IIoT software, we’re providing the tools to help operators analyze, interpret and present this data in user-friendly, actionable ways.

Get notified with mobile alerts

If you’re a DC manager or part of a maintenance staff responsible for ensuring operational uptime, how can you stay on top of what is happening across your facility? It starts with the Honeywell Pulse™ mobile alert, notification and visualization app: the first line of defense into your connected operations. Pulse is designed to alert you of issues as they happen, so you can respond quickly and avoid downtime. 

Pulse allows management and maintenance teams to stay connected with live performance notifications. End users can set custom-defined performance thresholds that trigger Pulse alerts that enable teams to review issues and collaborate from their smartphones. Pulse helps DC operators:

• Visualize fault event data and information in near-real time
• Proactively seek and tag trending throughput conditions
• Respond faster to conditions and leverage situational awareness

With Pulse, your teams can increase their organizational awareness of critical situations, helping them quickly evaluate asset or performance issues to ensure the fastest possible resolution.

Keep a watchful eye on equipment

Once stakeholders have been notified of a potential issue, Honeywell’s Uniformance® Asset Sentinel software allows them to conduct further analysis of equipment faults and system performance problems. This powerful tool continuously monitors asset health and process metrics to minimize unplanned downtime and greatly reduce your operations and maintenance costs. 

Asset Sentinel’s deep toolset and intuitive data visualizations enable DCs to predict and prevent asset failures and identify barriers to productivity. Combining real-time monitoring capabilities with powerful historical analytics, Asset Sentinel provides the earliest possible indications of asset degradation. It utilizes a flexible rules environment that supports custom-defined threshold parameters.

With access to robust performance dashboards, you can select from user-friendly visualizations — like heat maps, fault history and trends — or choose the fault-tree option for a detailed overview of asset-level status within a system.

Asset Sentinel dashboards help DC operators monitor key performance metrics, including:

• Cartons per minute at sortation conveyors
• Total shipping throughput
• Scanner read rates
• Wave completion status of merge conveyors

Uncover root causes of problems

Sometimes getting to the root cause of an equipment issue requires a longer, historic view of its performance. Honeywell Uniformance Insight helps DC operators and enterprise managers further investigate symptoms and causes of asset degradation. Insight works with Pulse and Asset Sentinel, helping operators pinpoint the time of an exception and its surrounding conditions. 

Insight can be utilized to investigate a variety of issues that impact DC productivity, including:

• Temperature and vibration of sortation/conveyor motors
• Repetitive faults from the control system
• Current draw of a power control panel
• Impacts (in gravitational forces) of sustained product impact

For more information about how these software tools can optimize your connected distribution center, read our in-depth article, Operational Intelligence at Your Fingertips.

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