Safe, reliable power has always been vital to manufacturing and process industries. With massive changes to energy systems underway, there are new opportunities to make energy systems work harder and better to power operations. Digital transformation is essential for gaining a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing business environment. With the right digital tools and insights, manufacturing and process industries can apply the most effective energy strategies, improving productivity and electrical resiliency.

Today, the very structure of energy systems powering manufacturing and process industries is changing fast, creating big opportunities to rethink how power is managed and optimized. Already, 77% of businesses plan to use new energy sources. Yet, industrial digitalization efforts have historically focused on immediate challenges—supply chain disruptions, lack of skilled workers, aging equipment and the like. Only 24% of industrials have identified energy and power concerns as a key digital driver and fewer have embraced the potential benefits. [Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence Report commissioned by Eaton] 

How do you identify worthwhile investments and justify the ROI of digital technologies? The data-driven insights provided through digital enablement are critical for supporting intelligent power management, delivering information that allows you to optimize energy use today and reach sustainability goals tomorrow, all while improving worker safety and the bottom line.

Proven digital strategies establish competitive advantage 

1. Electrical power monitoring is foundational. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Digitalization allows you to effectively and accurately monitor electrical equipment and measure power consumption in real time, so you can benchmark energy usage, detect anomalies and use less electricity. 
   
   Electricity is quickly becoming the energy source of choice, driving electric bills even higher. This means the ability to closely monitor electrical equipment and power quality and consumption will be even more important and the potential to impact costs and ESG goals will be greater. Electrical equipment and power monitoring delivers accurate insights on system performance across multiple devices within a facility and across an organization, making it easy to identify anomalies that contribute to inefficient energy use, poor power quality or have the potential to result in equipment failure.
   
   
2. Protect people, processes and critical data. The age-old approach to energy monitoring requires in-person access to equipment, which makes it difficult to get out ahead of a problem. Today, sensors and digital technologies enable remote monitoring, continuous data and real-time insights, which means your maintenance teams can predict a problem faster and more reliably without being exposed to it. Digital enablement allows your maintenance team to respond rapidly to problematic changes. This predictive maintenance approach allows you to detect anomalies in assets that may indicate a gradual failure in operation. By providing your maintenance team insight into the nature and urgency of the problem, they can deploy at the right time, with the right people, parts and personal protective equipment (PPE) to address the issue. 
   
   
3. Improve productivity by monitoring electrical equipment health. You stand to gain a substantial competitive advantage by keeping an eye on equipment health to predict power problems. Through digital enablement, you can get the data-driven insights you need to foresee, avert and solve problems before they have a chance to impact your operations. And when there is a potential problem, your team can be prepared to address it. Moving this data to the cloud also allows for applications and other systems to access this data without the need to be physically connected to the onsite network. 
   
   
4. Strengthen energy resilience. The increasing frequency and impact of power outages underscore the need for much more resilient power systems. Regardless of storms, grid interruptions or other unpredictable events, maintaining resilient and affordable power is a perennial priority. And while backup and emergency resources are common, you can now keep power on longer and more affordably. By incorporating existing backup generators and new low-carbon energy sources into a microgrid system, you stand to improve energy resilience, reduce carbon footprint and even cut your energy bill. Microgrids are stand-alone electrical systems with multiple generating sources and defined loads that can operate independently from the primary utility grid. At Eaton, we’re applying this approach at our own manufacturing facilities. We’re building microgrids designed to withstand Category 5 hurricanes to bolster the resilience of our manufacturing operations while reducing our carbon emissions and energy costs.
   
   
5. Plug energy leaks and optimize operations – the best energy is the energy you don’t use. Digital tools customized for industrial operations can improve your power efficiency and productivity to support more informed decisions backed by data and insights. Monitoring the broader production ecosystem is enabling manufacturing and process industries to identify and correct anomalies to keep operations running smoothly while reducing energy consumption and emissions to meet critical performance metrics.

Recent research shows that manufacturing and process industries need to move faster on digital transformation to reach operational energy goals. Early adopters will gain a key competitive advantage as the world moves toward a low-carbon future. Applying digital strategies to your energy infrastructure will lay a foundation to support your journey toward increasingly useful practices such as using digital twins to help you gain deeper insight into your existing systems, maximize the productivity and profitability of your operations, and design, build and test solutions virtually before committing to capital investments. 

For more than 100 years, our solutions have formed the backbone of safe, reliable electricity supply. Today, we can help transform your energy infrastructure to make systems work smarter and harder to power a more resilient and sustainable future.