Why reactive maintenance is costing manufacturers more than they realize

From Automation World: Unplanned downtime, emergency part sourcing and cascading failures — proactive maintenance strategies can prevent all of it.

Author Joel Torres writes:

Industrial facilities depend on complex automation systems to maintain productivity, safety and compliance. Programmable logic controllers (PLCs), instrumentation and supervisory control systems (SCADA) quietly coordinate critical processes behind the scenes.

When these systems fail unexpectedly, the consequences can be immediate and costly: production interruptions, emergency service calls, extended downtime and disrupted supply chains. Yet many organizations still rely on reactive maintenance, which means they address problems only after something breaks. As a result, when a failure occurs, the operational damage has already begun.

Proactive maintenance strategies, including preventive and predictive maintenance, offer a more resilient alternative.

Beyond preventing unplanned downtimes, proactive maintenance programs also play a key role in improving overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), a core metric used by many manufacturers to measure availability, performance and quality. In smart digital manufacturing environments, OEE is increasingly tracked in real time through integrated systems such as MES, SCADA and IIoT platforms.

By connecting maintenance activities with live production data provided by these operational technologies, organizations gain greater visibility into availability losses, performance inefficiencies and quality issues, enabling faster, data-driven decisions.

Water is water — and other costly myths

In this episode of the Distilled podcast, editor-in-chief Traci Purdum speaks with water treatment expert Brad Buecker about the dangers of the "water is water" mindset in industrial settings.

Buecker shares real-world examples of costly boiler failures caused by ignoring water chemistry, explains how water's near-universal solvent properties create scaling and corrosion risks and highlights how geography and climate shape treatment needs. He stresses that single water analyses are insufficient — comprehensive, historically collected data is essential for proper system design. The conversation also covers microbiological fouling, Legionella risks and the growing pressure on surface water supplies.

Listen to the conversation below.

What is Coriolis flow measurement?

From Plant Services: Many industrial processes require assessment of liquid and/or gas flow, and Coriolis technology provides one of the most accurate methods for making these measurements.

Lauton Rushford of Endress+Hauser USA writes:

Coriolis flowmeters are so named because they rely on the physics concept of Coriolis force. Inside these instruments, one or more tubes are oscillated at a frequency induced by pulses from an exciter. 

As gas or liquid process media flows through each tube, its inertia imposes additional twisting, changing the oscillatory pattern. Two detectors — one upstream and one downstream of the exciter — distinguish this phase difference, which directly correlates to mass flow, providing a highly accurate and direct measurement that is independent of process media properties.

The mechanics of this method — paired with onboard calculations performed electronically by the instrument transmitter — provide multiple process values for consumption by a host controller, including mass flow, temperature, density, volumetric flow, corrected volumetric flow, and others. This consolidation of measurement tasks reduces the complexity and cost of installing multiple instruments, while providing a more holistic view of a process by making the various datapoints available to host systems. In systems that leverage these capabilities, digital communication protocols significantly ease data transmission for monitoring plant process loops.

Analyzing the M&A landscape in the food and beverage industry

From Food Processing: In the latest episode of Food for Thought, Jake Steslicki, vice president for PMCF, discusses the merger and acquisition landscape coming out of 2025 and heading into the new year in the food and beverage industry.

Listen to the episode below.

Building the foundation for autonomous bioprocessing

From Pharma Manufacturing: While fully autonomous bioprocessing is within reach, adoption remains gradual as manufacturers navigate challenges around data maturity, regulatory expectations, and operational readiness. As companies modernize, the focus is shifting toward building the digital and organizational foundations needed to enable more intelligent, scalable process control, particularly through connected systems, stronger data infrastructure, and more explainable AI models that can support real-time decision-making.

In this episode of Off Script, Pharma Manufacturing spoke with Mel Radford, director, life sciences global accounts at Rockwell Automation, about the key barriers to autonomy and how companies can move from reactive operations toward predictive and closed-loop process control. The conversation explores how hybrid models combining first-principles engineering with AI can improve control performance, stability, and yield while remaining transparent and easier to validate, as well as the importance of embedding compliance, governance, and human-centered change management into next-generation control strategies.

Listen to the episode below.

Recapping the week on Processing

Articles

Improving oil and gas worker safety with AI-powered machine monitoring

Case study: How a beverage plant cut water waste by 15%

Where experienced engineers go wrong when designing high-velocity dust collection systems — Part 2: Duct system design errors that inhibit dust collection system performance

Maintaining a rotary vane vacuum pump: A practical guide

How application-specific modifications enhance strainer efficiency

Podcast

Powder drying trends with Pranav Shah