Top 5 Industrial IoT Use Cases
Industrial IoT has already noted its elasticity with deployments going live in several enterprises, showing off a different number of Industrial IoT use cases. It is crucial to note that Industrial IoT use cases will continue to grow in the coming years.
As per the survey report of 151 analytics professionals, 79% see the predictive maintenance of industrial machinery as a basic application of industrial analytics in the next 3 years. 15% examine industrial analytics as an significant part of success in business today, while 69% consider it will be valuable in the next 5 years.
In this post, we describe various IoT technology Platforms and how to recognize the right Industrial IoT use case solutions for your digital business that create business value by creating scale and efficiency across various industries.
Smart Metering:
Smart meters have received reasonably a lot of popularity across the globe in recent years. Industries are acknowledging the benefits of smart meters and assuming them to increase the efficiency and accuracy of utility management.
Organizations have already stated investments of more than USD 62 billion for smart meter infrastructure. Traditional meters estimate only total consumption, whereas smart meter is an internet proficient device that is capable to report when and how much of resources such as water, energy, and natural gas are utilized.
Power utility companies can utilize smart meters to reduce their operational costs greatly. Smart metering benefits by eliminating the hassle of monthly or quarterly meter readings. In the past, to make it simple for users to take readings, meters have been located outside of buildings or at the edge of gardens.
Smart meters can, however, be located anywhere in the household. Thanks to smart meters, using real-time dashboards, homeowners and renters can keep a closer eye on their energy consumption. And most important the insights provided by smart meter infrastructure can be also used for the formation of an even more customer-centric structure.
To connect the meters to the IoT platform, companies require a strong connection that is not available always. In some cases, measurement meters are placed behind the thick walls which may start to trouble for conventional mobile networks. A Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) uses a number of various frequencies in the ISM band and SRD (Short Range Device computing) Products, based on region.
With a low power consumption of LoRaWAN, smart meters for gas utilization can be installed independently from the main energy source. Another advantage is that it can easily cover unusual distances with relatively low infrastructure investment with a range of 4 and 20 km.
Predictive maintenance:
In predictive maintenance, keeping assets up and running has the capacity to significantly diminish the operational expenditure, result in significant savings for manufacturers. Manufacturers utilize predictive maintenance to minimize the probability of downtime by using sensors to monitor operational conditions, cameras, storing critical data in the cloud, and performing data analytics. This makes it possible to determine when a piece of equipment will fail before it does.
The IoT enabled systems and devices can give warning signs before problems occur. It is a combination of prolonged equipment life, more effective use of field techniques, and avoiding expensive lay-off, which may lead to potential safety hazards.
Over the time frame of 2016-2022, the compound annual growth for predictive maintenance rate was 39%, with annual technology spending reaching US$10.96 Billion by 2022. The above estimations are based on the Predictive Maintenance blended revenue of leading technology companies in the field, across 13 industries and 7 technology areas.
The data that flows from the IoT Sensors and devices will help to evaluate current conditions, to identify warning signs, to give alerts and then activate the appropriate maintenance process automatically. IoT changes maintenance into dynamic, automatic and also improved equipment lifecycle and fewer accidents.
Real-Time Asset Tracking:
As per the recent study, it is found that an estimated $1.9 trillion of economic value could be designed by the use of IoT devices and asset tracking solutions in the global supply chain and logistics sector. On the other side, as per a study by Infosys and IIMA University, 85% of manufacturing companies are aware of asset efficiency, but only 15% of those have implemented such pointers at a systematic level.
Industrial IoT enabled asset tracking is performing a broader role in the modern economy than ever before. Most of the companies that have their assets distributed over huge geographical sectors have to face a host of problems that affect their productivity, operational cost, staffing, and eventually their bottom line, among other things.
These issues could reveal in the form of the poor health of assets, leakage, productivity, excessive pollution, damage due to the natural crisis. These tracking assets enable business processes to provide information about the status of equipment, devices and performance.
The aim of asset tracking is to enable the enterprise to easily place and analyze key assets, including along with supply chain to optimize logistics, protect quality issues, recognize theft, and keep inventory levels.
Out of many industries that rely on asset tracking, Shipping is the one that heavily relies on asset tracking. On a large scale, IoT Sensors serve to support the position of the ship in a sea, and on a small scale, they can give the status and temperature of individual cargo containers.
The real-time tracking metrics on refrigerated containers help to store containers at a constant temperature so perishable goods remain fresh. Each refrigerated container needs to be equipped with temperature sensors, a mobile transmitter and a processing unit. If temperature varies from the target mark then the respective team will be informed and begin needed repairs.
Fleet Management:
In Industrial IoT, the industries that depend on transportation such as, the business process and fleet management assist them to reduce or overcome the risks incorporated with productivity. By 2020, North America is assumed to reach 12.7 million active fleet management systems discovered in commercial vehicle fleets, as per a recent study by Swedish machine-to-machine/IoT research firm Berg Insight.
The study also told that the number of active fleet management systems in Latin America is believed to increase from 2.3 million at the end of 2015 to 4.1 million in 2020. Connected technology has empowered fleet businesses to attain greater efficiencies while controlling their fleets and reducing overall transportation and staff costs in a better way.
Following are a few ways in which Industrial IoT transforms fleet management:
1. Provides Increased Visibility:
With the help of connected technology, you get to know where exactly your vehicles and drivers are at any point in time. Issues such as a driver driving carelessly, making unwanted stops, wasting fuel that was not possible to be tracked with existing legacy systems and technology can now be tracked and handled smoothly with the help of Industrial IoT Technology.
2. Preventive maintenance performance:
IIOT ensures that you acquired better insight into driver behavior while being able to analyze fleet’s health from anywhere. Alerts regarding service needs such as engine status check, low battery, reminders of inspection and other factors allow respective fleet owners to provide preventive maintenance and ensures that vehicles run in a secure way for longer.
3. Cost optimization:
Optimizing costs while ensuring that budgets should be managed wisely is the biggest concern of every fleet manager. IoT enabled vehicles, devices allow the fleet manager to better understand how money is being spent and recognize areas where they may save it.
Industrial IoT started to be the standard, every fleet business will naturally expect to benefit from stronger connectivity among devices and data received from them.
Connected Vehicles:
In general terms, connected vehicles are equipped with internet access that automates many normal driving tasks. Connected vehicles use any of a number of various communication technologies to communicate with the driver. In 2016, vehicle-related crashes on U.S. highways claimed 37,461 lives. US Dept of Transportation research conveys that 94% of serious crashes are due to human error.
Some of the benefits of automated vehicles include:
1. Self-driving can reduce the need for building new infrastructure and reduce maintenance costs and avoid accidents.
2. Crash-free driving and increased vehicle safety, a vehicle can analyze the environment continuously, making up for lapses in driver attention.
3. Self-driving vehicles could lead to a major reformulating of vehicle ownership and expand opportunities for vehicle sharing.
Cameras, radar, and lasers are three components that grew among the sensors, providing information into various GPS. Cameras allow the car’s computers to see what’s around it, while radar let the vehicles to see up to 100 meters away in the dark, rain, or snow. Lasers, which seem alike spinning sirens light, continuously examines the world around the vehicles and give the vehicle with a continuous, 3-D Omnidirectional viewpoint of its surroundings.
One of the largest challenges that industrial companies met when estimating Industrial IoT is to find out “use cases” where it can be used to enhance operations. Above 5 common patterns that represent more than 90% of all the applications that industries are come across will be utilized to generate business value.
hIOTron’s IoT Course will give you a holistic view about how IoT will help to build an Industrial IoT Solution.