We have been hearing a lot about IIOT to be the real revolution happening or industry 4.0 or the next industrial revolution. However its not like a eureka moment and it’s not something set out in future. It’s been an evolution into it for past many years. Factories were already getting digital with the industrial internet, with Industrial IOT its just picked up pace. The tools, technology and ease of data access has accelerated the pace of this adoption.
Large industrial houses like GE or Siemens or ABB were always an IIOT company although they were not known for it. They had the ability to monitor and managed the expensive machinery health Since it was important for them to prevent downtime to customers . It also enabled them to learn in real time how machine was being used to improve their engineering. The thing that has changed is that this capability can be offered and implemented by any industrial plant of any size or revenue.
IIOT is a vast area which includes everything from sensors to data big data & AI. After ERP, IIOT will change it further to pick up on problems sooner and there by saving time and money . Imagine a small shop manufacturing pumps – They can now be connected real-time to their sales offices so they know which pumps are selling each day which in turn enables them to adjust the production to what’s needed more, to getting inventory only when they need based on this data, and the predictive maintenance systems enable them to know if there is any flaws in the manufacturing process and once the pumps are installed at customer premises they can collect the live data and alert customer of any possible problem they are foreseeing .
There are many companies operating in this space trying to address different parts of the puzzle . At SequoiaAT we have been fortunate to work with 2 companies in this space @opabydesign work in building condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. @Deepthoughts works on building energy monitoring solutions for factories to ensure that machines are running efficiently and at optimum energy consumption
We may not see or experience much change in daily life unless we are involved in the industry or factory and that’s our daily job. Supervisors expertise to be called upon to identify and fix a problem is going away as a decision will be made on actual data and not the experience of a floor supervisor. Today if you are a small shop, and say a machine starts making noise most likely your workers are depended on more experienced people to troubleshoot and tell what the problem could be with help of these cheap but effective smart devices .
Link to Article on Linkedin
Comments are closed.