The possibilies in IoT for industry solutions
As manufacturers heavily invest to drive production quality, switch into intelligent supply chains and increase equipment efficiency, IoT is becoming a key factor in all decisions. The European manufacturing sector is pushing innovation through digital technology, addressing key challenges in operational efficiency, supply chain and workforce.
COVID-19 has created increasing pressures over the past eight months due to production shutdown, restrictions on employee movement though social distancing and rapidly shifting market demands, meaning companies have had to rethink and evaluate business models and focus.
The challenge facing the industry has been innovating at scale and at pace in a secure and standardised way; bringing together deep industry knowledge and technological expertise into partnership.
Companies such as Microsoft are working with manufacturers to increase leverage with technologies including data and analytics, augmented reality, digital twin – digital replicas of real-world things, places, business processes or people that are designed to control, simulate, analyse and improve real-world business operations – and IoT to speed up new opportunities and solve business challenges. Manufacturers preparing for the future are speedily building operations around a digital framework, so by actively integrating supply chain, increasing efficiency and production capacity.
As industry strives to gather more insight and intelligence into supply chain operations, IoT has become a key enabler. Companies are working hand-in-hand across the sector to help turn any potential of IoT into a real world solution. As such manufacturing decision-makers are widely concluding that Industrial IoT (IIoT) is essential to compete as it can help monitor quality, improve factory safety and reduce costs by further tracking assets and preventing expensive hardware shutdowns.
Leading global manufacturing organisations are embracing emerging IoT technology faster than other industries for internal operational use as well as integrating it into their saleable products; principally using tech focused on employee health and wellness, space optimisation and supply chain management. This is resulting in a rapidly growing number of services and features that offer developers open, flexible options for development, on demand secure data and the ability to achieve rapid industrial growth when growth is needed.
