Remote Data Collection Motivational Drivers, Challenges, and Potential Solutions in Industrial SME Companies

Data collected from industrial machines enable companies to pursue new servitization offerings such as machine health condition monitoring as well as to monitor the machine behavior for research and development purposes. In this study, qualitative data was collected from four different industrial SME companies to create a better understanding of the motivational drivers industrial companies may have to create remote data collection systems. The results will discuss the initial motivational drivers for data collection setup construction as well as the challenges companies were facing along the way in designing and implementing their systems. Based on the empirical research results, the recognition of internal motivational drivers and data utilization targets should be clear before proceeding to further development of data collection infrastructure. Generally, the research results recognize various areas that an automation industry company needs to consider before planning and implementing an online data collection system, what challenges they may face as well as generalized proposed solutions are presented.