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IoT in Manufacturing


The Internet of things are defined as a network of uniquely identifiable nodes that communicate without interactions using IP connectivity. IOT is combined with “human internet”, which connects people more pervasively than ever before because of mobility, to create the “Internet of Everything”. In a recent report, according to Gartner, “the installed base of things (excluding PCs, tablets and smartphones) will grow to 26 billion units in 2020, a near 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion units in 2009.”
The opportunity can be split into two broad categories 1) Using the technology to improve the process or 2) Using the technology to enhance a company’s product.
An informed manufacturing organization contains four elements: Informed products, process, people and infrastructure. These essentials elements of manufacturing are converging like never before, creating a more automated, intelligent and streamlined manufacturing process.
The possibilities across various manufacturing industries include
  • Energy and utilities.
  • Connected supply chain.
  • Plant floor automation.
·         Remote monitoring and management of critical assets
·         Proactive maintenance
Clearly, the IoT presents a rich opportunity for all industry verticals, across processes. Specifically in manufacturing, the IoT can improve and automate deci­sion-making across the value chain. But there are numerous challenges like standardization, security and privacy, Infrastructure and analytics that must be addressed before the full potential of IoT can be realized.
Expected benefits
  • Business process efficiency/operations optimization and control
  • Better supply chain management and Logistics
  • Product and/or service improvement and Innovation
  • Better customer service and support
Why Now?
As we said, many of the foundational concepts of IoT have been established for some time, traditionally called “machine to machine.” So why all the hype now? Essentially, several crucial advances in technology have come together to create the IoT opportunity in manufacturing:
Low-cost sensors. With the cost of processors dropping and expanding markets magnifying savings through scale, it is becoming increasingly cost effective to deploy dense sensor data acquisition pools.
Reliable and affordable communication. With near-field network standards becoming established to support thing-to-thing communication (immediate area networking), local area wireless (WiFi) becoming faster and more reliable, and long-haul networking (wired and wireless) increasingly available, the ease of creating the requisite connectivity has improved considerably. The emergence of IPv6 and the ability to give all things a unique address will
also enable IoT applications.
Big data and analytics (BDA). Having streaming data is useless if it can’t be analyzed. Advances in computing capacity and the development of data handling de facto standards(e.g., Hadoop and Spark) supply the necessary underpinnings.
Storage. Advances in storage technology, both the hardware itself and the software used to manage it, have substantially increased the speed and accessibility of information. Most importantly, incremental costs are minimal, meaning that storage costs will not be a barrier to launching a data-heavy IoT project.

 

Moving Forward with IoT :
No wonder that organizations are investing in getting things on the Internet, as they see the potential for generating business-critical insight from this data. Many organizations have started to do this already. While the challenges can be overwhelming, the opportunities to harvest business value from IoT technologies are numerous.

 
Source:IDC ManufacturingInsights,DESIGNING FOR MANUFACTURING’S ‘INTERNET OF THINGS CTS,