Mobile air compressors are a key piece of equipment for workers in a variety of industries. Mobile air compressors allow these workers to perform critical tasks like product finishing, cutting, and welding at locations where installing a stationary air compressor would be impossible.
This utility is driving the growth of the mobile air compressor market. Research firm Global Market Insights forecasts that the portable air compressor market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4.3% over the next few years to $8 billion in 2026.
Yet, while engineering advancements have made mobile air compressors more useful over the years, their core functionality has not changed. This lack of innovation has made it difficult for OEMs to differentiate mobile air compressors, keeping the average price for these machines low.
The emergence of the IIoT has the potential to change this status quo. Using the IIoT, OEMs can extract data from mobile air compressors and transmit it wirelessly to the cloud, where they and their customers can monitor, analyze, and act upon this data to improve business outcomes.
Using the IIoT, OEMs now have the ability to build and deploy IIoT applications that make their compressors more energy efficient, easier and less expensive to maintain, and harder to be stolen. By using the IIoT to enhance the value of their products with these and other new features, OEMs will not only be able to increase prices for this equipment but also offer customers new pay-as-you-go options and other services that create new long-term revenue streams.
Improving Mobile Air Compressors’ Energy Efficiency
Optimizing mobile air compressors’ energy use is one way in which OEMs can use the IIoT to increase these machines’ value. According to another report from Global Market Insights, energy expenses represent as much as 75% of a mobile air compressor’s lifetime cost. In addition, the greenhouse gases and other negative environmental consequences of their energy use is leading government regulators to establish new energy efficiency standards for these machines.
With the IIoT providing them with data on how their equipment uses energy over time, OEMs can improve the energy efficiency of their mobile air compressors. Better energy efficiency will not only reduce their customers’ lifetime product costs but also make it easier for these OEMs to ensure their equipment complies with new government energy efficiency regulations.
Reducing Maintenance Costs and Equipment Downtime
OEMs can also use IIoT data from their mobile air compressors to optimize the maintenance of these machines. Traditionally, this maintenance is performed on a periodic basis or only after the machine experiences performance problems. This can lead to unnecessary maintenance costs, with unneeded truck rolls to check on equipment that hasn’t been used as much as forecasted. In addition, if a compressor is used more than expected but not maintained, this additional wear and tear can result in equipment downtime.
Using the IIoT, OEMs and their customers can remotely track how much their mobile air compressors are being used, and they can receive alerts when a compressor’s usage crosses a predefined threshold. By making sure to perform maintenance on compressors that need it, and avoiding maintenance on those that don’t, the IIoT can both reduce maintenance costs and equipment downtime.
Stopping Air Compressor Theft
Mobile air compressors are designed to be small and mobile — making them easy to steal. However, by using the IIoT, OEMs and their customers can be alerted if a compressor has breached a geofence that indicates it might have been stolen.
In addition, using IIoT location tracking capabilities, OEMs can pinpoint the location of this equipment, allowing them to quickly recover the stolen machine. At the same time, they can use the IIoT to remotely disable the mobile air compressor with a lockout signal, making the machine useless to the thief who stole it.
New Edge-to-Cloud Solutions Simplify the IIoT for OEMs
How can OEMs deploy IIoT applications that allow them to offer their customers these and other new features and services — including ongoing usage-based arrangements in which customers pay for “air as a service.”
In the past, there were significant technical implementation challenges OEMs faced if they wanted to deploy these types of applications. In particular, building the infrastructure needed to extract data from these machines and then transmit it wirelessly to cloud-based systems is complex, and generally not one of these OEMs’ core competencies.
Fortunately, new edge-to-cloud IIoT infrastructure technologies have emerged that eliminate the need for OEMs to acquire all the complex expertise needed to build this infrastructure themselves. These all-in-one technologies include edge devices with built-in protocols for extracting data from mobile air compressors. They include global wireless services that simplify the transmission of this data to the cloud. And they include cloud APIs that make integration of this equipment data into the cloud a snap.
OEMs now have an opportunity to differentiate their mobile air compressors by connecting them to the cloud — thus making them “smart.” These new smart mobile air compressors can inform their OEMs, owners, and operators when they are inefficiently using energy, tell them if they need maintenance, and alert them if they have been stolen.
With the IIoT, a new era of innovation has arrived for the mobile air compressor market — and those OEMs who begin using the IIoT now to enhance the value of their compressors will be the first to reap the benefits.