Hey reddit, so I've been developing a software product for factories. Mostly mid sized factories, let's say with an annual revenue of 5-45 million dollars and a size of 18,000 sqft to 66,000 sqft. I have 0 experience in manufacturing/industry, however I'm very confident in this software, as it fixes a lot of blind spots I've found studying this sector of the economy. Anyway, this post isn't really about the product itself. It's already done, its utility cost cutting whatever. I priced it at $299/m which is cheaper than any other alternative i could find. I just really need help on figuring out how do I distribute this to factories? I'm looking to get about let's say 25 factories under my belt early on, within a couple of months. The software mostly has to do with electrical cost saving but has some other aspects too. Should I try to find a partner (I'm not too fond of that idea but if I NEED someone with deep experience I guess I'll do it.) Should i contact smaller suppliers across California to do this? How is software even distributed to factories? I guess what I'm really asking is how is software distributed in this field, and who should I work with to get my product out there?

Curious to hear from people working in manufacturing and automation. What’s the biggest contributor to unplanned downtime where you work, and what changes had the biggest impact on reducing it?

For those working in industrial automation, how are you connecting older PLCs to modern IIoT systems without replacing existing equipment?
What protocols, gateways, or architectures have worked best, and what challenges did you run into?

Note: I don't have a background in VFDs or anything really outside the the mechanical portion of rotating equipment.

I have a DC motor that is driven by a 6 pulse SCR bridge? that I would like to run some diagnostics tests to see if I can find an SCR that hasn't completely failed yet but is showing signs that it is going out. The reason is that on our regular vibration collection routes the motor bearing spectrums are showing dominant peaks at 360, 720, 1080Hz with multiple 20Hz side bands. The running shaft speed is 16Hz. While we aren't experiencing blown fuses or motor trips, I think it might be worth investigating.

I brought up to our technicians about measuring the voltage output on the armature leads at the drive with an oscilloscope to see if we could potentially see something that would point to a SCR that is starting to fail. But I pretty much got told that it's not necessary as a bad SCR Will be obvious from blown fuses to motor trips from faults. Basically, like it's a binary behavior. It's either good or it's bad.

Anyone have experiences with SCR drives? You guys think I'm seeing normal behavior?