A Monday morning problem

Sarah Chen manages 12 assembly lines and 2,000 machines. Before her 10 AM production review, she needs one answer: Which lines need attention this week?

Simple question. Painful journey.

She starts in the IoT dashboard. Line 4’s motor temperature is running 12°C above baseline — has been for three days. Calibration drift or bearing failure? The dashboard shows signals, not causes. So she pivots to the ERP system for maintenance history. Machine 42 had a bearing replaced eight months ago. Warranty says 12 months, but the operating hours log — buried in a separate historian database — shows it’s been running at 130% rated capacity since January.

That context exists nowhere in the IoT dashboard.