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As supply chain challenges continue, companies that manufacture technology capable of predicting equipment failures are seeing increased demand for their products, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription).

What’s going on: Tech developed by startup Augury Inc. has helped PepsiCo Inc., Hershey Co. and other manufacturers reduce the number of machinery breakdowns and stoppages, lower replacement-parts costs and add back thousands of hours of manufacturing capacity.

• “Augury makes wireless sensors that attach to factory equipment and pick up the sounds they emit. The data is transmitted to its cloud-based platform and analyzed by artificial-intelligence software trained to recognize more than 80,000 industrial machinery sounds at various life cycles of operations—from functioning smoothly to falling apart—and overlays these sounds to detect patterns.”
• “Augury’s system then relays its insights to the plant’s maintenance team in real time, enabling them to better focus equipment inspections and get a jump on maintenance needs.”

Why it matters: The AI-enabled technology, which is also produced by companies C3.ai Inc., Senseye and DataProphet, isn’t new, but manufacturer demand for it has soared recently owing to “added supply-chain disruptions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ongoing Covid-related shutdowns in China.”

• Senseye’s tech can slash unplanned machine maintenance by as much as 50% and bolster worker productivity by up to 30%, according to Siemens AG, which acquired the startup in June.