ThingWorx App Helps Engineers Monitor and Service IoT Assets Remotely

Monitor operating conditions and remote service the IoT using ThingWorx Asset Advisor.

ThingWorx Asset Advisor (Image courtesy of PTC.)

ThingWorx Asset Advisor (Image courtesy of PTC.)

So, you got that fleet of Internet of Things (IoT) assets out there collecting data. All is well, right?

Well, how are you using the data to monitor operations and assure assets are working at peak performance?

The development of such a tool can cause high anxiety to many budding IoT users at launch.

To alleviate this anxiety, PTC has released the ThingWorx Asset Advisor app. The tool will assist in the remote monitoring and servicing of the assets currently out in the field. This release comes months after PTC announced a similar Asset Advisor for the manufacturing sector.

The Asset Advisor is built into the ThingWorx platform. It offers role-based management to engineers, service managers and technicians. PTC reports that the application is customizable to your IoT deployment and can scale to your network. This offers IoT developers quite a lot of flexibility when deploying and maintaining an IoT fleet.

TheAsset Advisor can:

  • Report on asset operating conditions.
  • Release alerts of anomalies.
  • Remote service connected assets.

PTC reports that with the help of its Asset Advisor, users will be able to focus on capture emergencies, improving efficiency and reducing downtime. The company also notes that thanks to remote servicing, its beta-testing customers have improved:

  • First-time fix rate by 30 percent over the industry average.
  • Mean time to repair by 6-fold.
  • Equipment uptime by 20 percent.

These are significant claims indeed from the ranks of Elekta, Diebold, Sysmex and McKinley Elevator.

“Connected Service is a key use case for digital transformation by asset owners and operators,” said Heather Ashton, research manager, Service Innovation and Connected Product Strategies, IDC. “In fact, IDC believes that by 2020, 50 percent of global OEMs with connected service offerings will have incorporated augmented service execution and/or remote management, thus improving service margins by up to 30 percent. Using an IoT platform to enable this capability is a critical ingredient to success.”

In other words, demands for remote servicing of IoT assets are rising, and users are beginning to notice the benefits. If you have yet to custom build your own tool, then you will need to look for a vendor like PTC to build one for you.

For more on PTC and other IoT Platforms, read “eBook: Comparing Platforms to Add Internet of Things Capabilities to Products.”


Written by

Shawn Wasserman

For over 10 years, Shawn Wasserman has informed, inspired and engaged the engineering community through online content. As a senior writer at WTWH media, he produces branded content to help engineers streamline their operations via new tools, technologies and software. While a senior editor at Engineering.com, Shawn wrote stories about CAE, simulation, PLM, CAD, IoT, AI and more. During his time as the blog manager at Ansys, Shawn produced content featuring stories, tips, tricks and interesting use cases for CAE technologies. Shawn holds a master’s degree in Bioengineering from the University of Guelph and an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.