Abstract
Machines and other equipment that are used in industry are generally long-term investments. Once invested, the machines usually run for several decades until a technical reinvestment is necessary. Nowadays, the 4th industrial revolution is taking place and digitalization is omnipresent. Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are just some of the technological innovations that are shaping the future right now. These innovations do not work with the manually driven equipment that has been invested some years ago because they are all based on data – and these (partly) manually operated equipment don´t produce data or they don´t collect it properly. In order to produce and collect data, the manually working machines have to be replaced – or retrofitted! voestalpine Stahl GmbH and its technical service and maintenance department (TSM, furthermore short voestalpine) decided to retrofit the existing equipment based on technological, economical as well as sustainability reasons. The approach, advantages and limitations are displayed here.
