A secure OT foundation, a focused workshop, and an early predictive-maintenance save — inside week one of going live.
When a plant runs three shifts on paper, the temptation is to skip ahead to the dashboard. Batesville Casket’s Vicksburg, Mississippi facility wanted something different: a foundation they could own.
The setup
Three shifts, paper-based production tracking, no real-time visibility. Legacy PLCs on the floor were owned and managed by third-party integrators — Batesville’s own engineers had no read access. Leadership wanted to roll out Ignition as a single on-prem platform their team could own.
What was in the way
The OT network wasn’t safe to build on: no segmentation, no documented inventory, no controlled way to add assets without expanding the attack surface. And the existing PLCs were closed — going deeper there was a multi-month conversation Batesville couldn’t wait on.
What we did
Step one was the unglamorous one. Working with Dynex, we ran an OT network assessment and stood up a segmented, isolated control network — clean IT/OT separation and a process that lets Batesville’s own engineers add assets safely.
Step two was scoping the rollout against business problems, not screens. We installed Ignition with an on-prem SQL backend and OPC UA on the plant floor. Before building anything, we ran a workshop with operators, engineers, and maintenance to break the answers into repeatable patterns we could reuse across the facility.
Step three was first-wave instrumentation. We deployed Opto 22 RIO MM-series modules (PoE-powered) on two saws — a third on the way — covering vibration, board count via photo eye (target: one board every 13 seconds), motor current, motor temperature, and the e-stop circuit. Working solution stood up within one week of equipment arrival.
The first save
Within weeks of going live, vibration on one saw started trending high. The team caught it on the dashboard, took the saw down on a planned window, and replaced the bearing before catastrophic failure.
A new saw of that size has a roughly six-month lead time and a replacement cost in the $50,000–$100,000 range. That single intervention paid back the engagement.
What changed on the floor
- Maintenance shifted from a round-robin schedule to priorities driven by current, vibration, and temperature data
- Batesville purchased 5–6 additional RIOs in the first month and started deploying them on their own
- The same template is now slated to roll out to 4–5 additional facilities
Why it worked
We didn’t lead with the dashboard. We led with the OT network — because everything else sits on top of it. Then we kept the first wave of instrumentation small and concrete enough that the wins were visible inside a week, not a quarter.