Rockwell and other global suppliers of factory-automation equipment, including General Electric Co., Emerson Electric Co. and ABB Ltd., increasingly are selling remote monitoring services to help manufacturers fix or prevent problems. These services, which have become more feasible as factories have become more computerized, help companies deal with skill shortages. Those are particularly acute in remote places, such as the mill here in Ticonderoga or on oil rigs in the Middle East.
Emerson executives who sell monitoring services talk about the "four D's"—dull, distant, dirty and dangerous. Those describe conditions at some factories, mines or oil rigs. It is often hard to find skilled people willing to work in such places, a problem likely to worsen as baby boomers retire.
Under the mantra of learning from "big data," the monitors also would like to analyze information gathered from factory floors to advise their customers on how to improve efficiency. Cloud computing is making it easier to store and analyze vast amounts of data from machines.
But many manufacturers remain wary of giving suppliers too much inside information about how they make products, or of taking the risk that outsiders will inadvertently gum things up. "Some places have bought into it," Rick Dolezal, a vice president at ABB, said in an interview. "Others are just scared to death of it."
A U.S. unit of Germany's Bayer AG uses computerized controls made by ABB to run equipment at a plant making blood-clotting agents in Berkeley, Calif. "We love working with them," David Kavanaugh, a Bayer engineer, said of ABB. Even so, Bayer gives ABB remote access to the control equipment only when a problem needs to be resolved, not all the time. "Being in the pharmaceutical world, we have to be extremely careful about our access control," Mr. Kavanaugh said.
System suppliers still need to work on assuring customers that their data can be shared without major risks. "Some of these industries need to evolve from little data to big data to really prosper," said Charlie Peters, a senior vice president at Emerson. First, he said, "they have to trust us."
Some of the monitoring done by Rockwell is considered so sensitive that it takes place only behind locked doors. In other cases, equipment suppliers help customers set up their own remote-monitoring systems so they don't need to involve outsiders.
The International Paper mill is connected to Rockwell engineers in Cleveland via a dedicated phone line. When they spot a problem, the Rockwell engineers advise people in the mill on what to do. "They can do almost anything," said Mr. Bussey.
Without this help, International Paper probably would need to hire another engineer, Mr. Bussey said. International Paper won't say how much it pays Rockwell for the monitoring. "It's not cheap," said Mr. Bussey, "but we believe it justifies itself."
The goal is "to tell them they're about to have a problem before they have a problem," said Gary Pearsons, Rockwell's global head of customer support. Rockwell engineers in Cleveland recently were able to use pressure data gathered from inside an oil rig in Alaska to tell an oil company it needed to check an air filter.
Eli Lilly & Co., a pharmaceutical company, is installing electronic devices at an insulin plant in Indianapolis that will allow Emerson to monitor certain equipment there. Kurt Russell, an engineer at the Lilly plant, said the service will allow for constant monitoring of things that in the past were checked only now and then. That includes temperatures inside equipment, a possible indicator of trouble.
"It's almost what could be considered a full-time baby sitter," said Mr. Russell. He doesn't see any privacy threats: "They really can't see how you make your products and how you run your equipment."
Among GE's customers is a Lonmin PLC platinum mine in South Africa. Among other things, GE remotely watches the rate at which ore is being fed into crushing machinery.
ABB employs 330 service engineers to monitor automation equipment in the U.S., up 10% from five years ago. Many of them are based at centers in Houston, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. "I think there is a huge upside on it," said Matt Meka, an ABB engineer in New Berlin, Wis. "Not everybody understands what the technology can do for them," he said, adding: 'We've got to do a better job" of explaining that.
Could equipment suppliers actually run factory equipment remotely, rather than just monitoring it? "That will be the trend of the future," said ABB's Mr. Dolezal.
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