How companies can save time and money through the Industrial Internet of things

Go IIoT or go home. There is no doubt that IIoT plays a key role in today's industry - and companies should be happy about it. IIoT presents companies with numerous new business opportunities. Companies that don't keep up with the trend will have a hard time surviving in the long run.

A company produces a product that consists of various components. These are brought together on several conveyor belts before they are put together in a final step to form the end product. A completely normal process - until one of the assembly lines fails.

The full IIoT stack: Harvest data from products and processes and use them for new business opportunities or to be more efficient

A normal process without IoT Solutions

The production manager quickly gives the responsible service partner an emergency call who arrives at the manufacturer 45 minutes later. During the assessment, he notices that the defective part is not in stock and must first be ordered. In addition, he is unable to repair the damage himself. Only an employee of a partner company who is on vacation can do that.

Several days pass before the assembly line is up again and production can continue. Until then, the company loses a lot of time and money.

The key account manager spends the next few days explaining to dissatisfied customers why he cannot deliver the critical product at the agreed time. Also, this is an entirely normal process in a company.

Stagnant production due to a defective assembly line

The game changing benefits of IIoT

A few years ago, companies had to consider such production downtimes. Today it is up to the companies themselves how much they want to make themselves dependent on fate - thanks to the Industrial Internet of Things or simply IIoT. IIoT is also better known as the interaction of robots and machines with sensors and software.

With sensors and the automatic collection, evaluation, and use of data, defects can be discovered and repaired before they lead to damage. We are talking about predictive maintenance. But not every flaw has to lead to production stoppages or is being discovered. Machines often run in a suboptimal condition for years, which means that processes require significantly more energy for the same outcome and are more expensive. IoT can also counteract such types of defects or deficiencies.

However, the interaction between software and machines also works the other way round. Production can automatically be adapted to customer demand through the connection and ramped up or down accordingly. 

According to a survey by Morgan Stanley, most companies expect from IoT an improvement in the effectiveness, productivity, production downtime, and an increase in the life cycle of their machines. In addition, numerous companies take advantage of the opportunity to offer their customers added value through smart solutions and integrated apps.

IIoT applications making it possible to easily access analyzed, real-time data to track, surveil or monitor products and processes

“IIoT is not about creating beautiful apps to visualize data. IIoT is about using data smartly so that it can be integrated into business processes and improve them. IIoT is successful if, for example, an employee can take on more important tasks for 30 minutes a day than reading data from sensors or evaluating Excel tables,” says Christoffer Lange, CEO of Digitread Connect - the most innovative IIoT Company of Norway.

Competetive advantage through IIoT solutions

More and more companies are recognizing the potential of IIoT and are transforming their companies into the digital age. "By integrating all of our modern devices with the Internet, the IoT market will grow to over $ 2.4 trillion annually by 2027," the Business Insider expects.

In addition, growth of up to 42 billion IoT devices is expected until 2027 - in 2019, it was 8 billion.

 Business Insider Intelligence report predicts a massive growth of the IoT market

"Many manufacturers and industrial product companies have made great strides in connecting their products and appliances to the IoT. But succeeding in this era demands much more than technology connectivity. The advent of the IIoT is a once-in-a-lifetime business disruption—one that requires new capabilities and will provide incredible opportunities", according to PWC's accurate analysis.

Many companies think that IT projects are always unpredictably expensive and take time. Some fear the complexity of the topic. But that doesn't have to be the case. With the right partner at your side, these transformation processes can take place quickly, cheaply, and efficiently - especially if they're using "No-code - Low-code solutions." "A company specializing in IIoT should be able to understand the customer's problems and be able to present him with precise analyses and solutions.

Companies should find the right partner and dare to approach the topic. Most of today's companies haven't even scratched on the surface of using the opportunities of IIoT to their advantage," concludes Digitread Connect's CEO Christoffer Lange.

Instead of waiting to see what happens, companies should prepare for the new age and use IIoT to gain a decisive competitive advantage in a digitized world.