AN INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPROACH TO THE PROACTIVE MANAGEMENT OF SUBSCRIBER IDENTIFICATION MODULES IN INDUSTRY

The Industry 4.0 paradigm focuses heavily on decentralisation, modularity and interoperability. These principles form the foundation for an effective Industry 4.0 ecosystem. The South African heavy industry still relies heavily on the traditional approach to centralised monitoring and control. Various Industry 4.0 initiatives have however been proposed and implemented in the heavy industry sector. For these initiatives to operate effectively, a stable network layer is required to facilitate reliable data transfer. To achieve data transfer over large geographical distances, most industrial information systems make use of mobile cellular networks, which implies the use of subscriber identification modules (SIMs) and supporting hardware such as network routers. The mismanagement of SIM cards can however result in excessive communication costs, which can in turn hamper the effectiveness of wireless data transmission. This paper presents a comprehensive information and asset management system to assist with overall SIM card management. The system allows for the accurate analysis of communication costs and ensures transparency both in the financial domain and in the physical domain. Results in this paper illustrate the effectiveness of this system in isolating communication anomalies that result in excessive data costs. The results show that the system can improve the quality and reliability of wide-area wireless telemetry and maintain indirect expenses that are associated with industrial information system communications. The proposed system assisted in reducing overall wide-area wireless communication cost with approximately 62%.