Legacy equipment is deeply rooted in the industrial and manufacturing world. Except for state-of-the-art manufacturing plants, most facilities continue to depend on their older legacy production equipment and other systems that may be even decades old which are still very fit for purpose. It represents millions in capital expenditures and years of planning, not to mention significant investments in supply chain management, process improvement, safety systems, and operator training. Equipment is purchased with the knowledge that it will last and can be depreciated over its useful life.
Modern maintenance procedures & predictive maintenance can be even more critical when dealing with aging equipment that may be at higher risk for failures and unplanned downtime.
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Challenges of Retrofitting existing equipment
The hardest part of retrofitting older systems is dealing with the unique, one-off characteristics of each legacy situation — often without accurate or useful documentation. The know-how & experience of the equipment owners is key in the overall success of the retrofit.
If the legacy system uses an older communication protocol, its crucial that this is fully understood and either worked with or replaced to ensure that the equipment runs smoothly with new controller and sensors.
Once complete, equipment can either be stand alone or if the data is to go into a plant MES (manufacturing execution system), corporate database, or cloud storage. We can establish what networking we have access to: wired LAN, Wi-Fi, cellular, satellite or leave system stand alone.
