Unleashing the True Power of Industrial IoT

The Internet of Things is an enormous network of smart devices which together work to collect and analyze data. Between the year 2014 and 2017, the global IoT market was projected to double its size, thereby passing the one trillion U.S. dollars mark by the same. On the same side by the year 2019, the global IoT market will be valued at more than 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars with the number of connected devices to reach 20.35 billion in the same year. Companies in the sector like transportation, Oil & Gas, and travel invest 0.6% of their revenue on IoT, which makes up to 128.87 million U.S. dollars.

It has been known that by the year 2020 there will be tens of billions of data-spouting devices connected to the internet and they are already changing our lives with a greater perspective.

The propagation of smart things has reached a huge mass. They have spread in a way that 79% of U.S. consumer has at least one connected smart device in their homes.

Industrial IoT has bridged the gap between the industrial equipment and the recent technologies that have boomed the market. It has helped many customers to optimize their industrial operations and henceforth increase their productivity and efficiency. Many people have started using Industrial IoT applications for predictive quality and maintenance so that they can remotely monitor their operations from anywhere.

The technology has reimagined and transformed the processes in several industries such that it has opened completely a new era of economic growth and competitiveness. Future of the same is such that the intelligent machines will highly impact the efficiency, productivity, and operation of the industries around the world. The prediction power goes in a way that Industrial IoT has improved the operational efficiencies of many industries. For example, if any machine goes down then the sensors being used detect the possible breakdown and tells if any dangerous operating condition is about to occur.

Every industry whether it is manufacturing, Oil and Gas, Water etc. has been a powerful supporter of boosting the productivity, efficiency, and safety of the respective industry.

Here’s how every industry has adopted Internet of Things into their workflow process-

Transportation:

Since ancient times our lives have been running on transportation to travel from one place to another. Whether you talk about going to the office in the morning, buying grocery from the stores or travel international, transportation has been the blood of our life. The ancient cumbersome transportation system had made our lives very much insecure and unsafe.

Various digital technologies like the Internet of Things took the pace in the technological market and brought a massive change in the industry. IoT in transportation let you know exactly where your fleet is and when it will arrive by tracking the real-time location. You can track your freight and can stay updated on its condition and can accordingly cater the maintenance services. Predictive analysis and geo-fencing help in managing the problems very efficiently. An insight into the fleet helps in many ways as it helps in on-time delivery, proliferation, last mile delivery etc.

For industries like medical, fleet transportation requires extra safety and security. As these trucks carry biopharmaceutical and biologic medicines, they are to be kept at a specific temperature throughout the journey. Temperature sensors being installed on the trucks sends the temperature to the controller to ensure that medicine is safe.

Apart from this, in recent days, most electric cars are connected through the Internet of Things. Sensors being used collect the data from various sources and hence the data is analyzed according to which real-time alerts are sent. These IoT connected cars increase the convenience and hence make the lives easier and a more comfortable one. The recent survey tells that there will be 250 million IoT connected cars on the world’s streets which depicts that transportation has become highly dependent on the Internet of Things.

Here are few applications of IoT in Transportation:

Real-time location Tracking-

Lost, delayed or misplaced shipments were always a problem in transportation and shipping companies. IoT enabled asset tracking feature lets you track the real-time location of an asset/fleet and can be used to monitor deliveries even within the organization. IoT in transportation and logistics has reduced the costs and emissions which were harmful to the infrastructure of the transportation industry. Not only this the detailed tracking of the assets increases the customer satisfaction too. And getting the product to the customer at the right time, right place and with affordable cost is what makes the business unique and efficient. Instead of scanning barcodes, IoT sensors track assets in transit.

Environment sensing-

Sensitive goods need to be stored under particular environmental conditions, for example, a particular temperature during transportation so that the quality of the goods does not get affected. Sensors record the temperature and send an alert if it increases the threshold. Not only this IoT sensors used in Oil tank prevents the explosion by sending alerts well before time.

Fleet Management-

According to Gartner, by 2021 less than 1% of long- haul, over the road freight will be carried by autonomous trucks. IoT in transportation has improved the operational efficiency by proper monitoring and real-time tracking of the vehicle. Business leaders look for real-time fleet information so that they can reap business benefits to make intelligent business decisions in real-time. GPS tracking, Geofencing, Customized dashboards are some of the salient features offered by Fleet Management Solution.

Oil and Gas industry:

Unconventional resources have always been a great challenge in the Oil and Gas industry. The development of oil and gas reservoirs was an urgent need to get updated with the analytics, new sensors, and processes. Technology that was used in earlier days posed a great challenge for large field operations in quickly and reliably integrating the robust operating off the field to cloud systems. The Industrial IoT came as the biggest opportunity for bringing the advancement of industrial technology and to address all of these challenges it brought the transformative results in the earlier industrial revolution.

Here are following after impacts of implementing IoT in Oil and Gas industry:

Automatic remote operations-

With time well drilling and completion became a very complicated process due to scarcity in field experts. The Automatic Remote Operations offers many benefits and has improved the well quality, and equipment failure and decreased the downtime.

Massive Data Collection-

Industrial IoT can tackle the massive amount of data on a large scale across an entire site. The system is integrated completely with hundreds of thousands of sensors which sends the data to a control center for better analysis and monitoring.

Analytic Integration-

After collecting data from various sensors, analysis plays a crucial role. Real-time analytics of a large amount of data helps in improving the processes and optimizing the production. Although the data collection topology has been a very complex process till now the smart machine and transferring a large amount of data to the cloud have eradicated the conventional processes.

Secured operations-

As a large amount of data flows, security is very much crucial. Various security models like DDS security model have been adopted for the protection of the data flow. Protocols like MQTT, XMPP, HTTP and REST are used to ensure that the data flow is highly secured.

The limitless potential of Industrial IoT has created vast distributed systems and new intelligent machines. It has changed the world across many industries and has given them a better perspective for their better business outcomes. These technologies illustrate the future in a very intelligent way: cars that drive themselves, renewable energy, smart hospitals, planes that fly themselves and smart medical services. Therefore, the Oil and Gas industry has leveraged digital technologies like the Internet of Things at a very faster pace with a very active and flexible mindset.

Water Industry:

Internet of Things has highly influenced the water management system by implementing the out of the box features. From the day mankind came into existence, management of water has been a serious issue and a very serious topic of debate. Inculcating the Internet of Things in our everyday life has greatly impacted the Water Industry.

The Internet of Things has helped in getting the right amount of water in the right place for the right duration of time. One of the challenges in water management is to determine the amount of water that any particular city is going to receive the next day. Using Predictive analytics from the Internet of Things technology paved the way for determining the same. A complete track is kept on the water consumed on a particular day in the city.

Not only this IoT Water also helps in the shutdown of pumps and in scheduling the maintenance on a regular basis. The Level sensors and the equipment used are deployed across the reservoirs and overhead tanks. These specially designed sensors determine the level of water present in a tank or reservoir. This water level is communicated to the central server for effective water conservation. IoT Water has made the human lives more convenient, in fact, has helped in the effective conservation and management of the resources and energies.

Let’s see which areas are highly affected by IoT in water management-

Monitoring the Water-

Saving the world’s most critical resource requires constant monitoring over the integrated systems. Internet of Things helps water suppliers to understand the pattern in which the water is been consuming. Systems such as Smart Water Meter helps in the real-time monitoring of the water consumption by every tenant in the building and thus helps in the efficient water consumption.

Water supply and distribution-

Data has put a huge impact on digital technologies like the Internet of Things. The data collected gives a complete visibility into the way operations are running. Various important information like pressure, water flow, leakage, and temperature can be known and accordingly actions can be taken.

Maintenance-

Effective maintenance system has been a true possibility with the Internet of Things. IoT sensors collect the data and tell if there is any leak within the system. The leak can be quickly fixed and hence can lessen the future breaks in the system. With the help of the Internet of Things and Predictive analysis, one can know about the failure pretty well in advance and therefore can take actions accordingly.

What is IIoT really doing to the industrial sector?

As the internet of things has made its way into industrial sector, it is important to acknowledge that the real adoption of the technology will come when people would realize that they don’t have to build and design factories the way they have been always doing.

To put in simple words, Industrial IoT is paving the way for the complete transformation of the business processes like from production to ordering to delivery and maintenance. Sensors used in warehouse help the companies to monitor the stock of essential items. Similarly, sensors used in the delivery system helps in tracking the shipment from the time they leave the production house to the respective considered person and those used in production help in detecting the breakdown well before time. Internet of Things help in improving efficiency and minimize unnecessary expenses. With the evolution of technologies like IoT, many companies are accelerating the scale and scope of their market in the forthcoming years. The arrival of the Internet of Things Approach has taken off the security issues of the end user and homeowners as well as businesses. You can trust on a single piece of hardware which guards the security issues, updates them and hence remediate them issues which might arise further.

With the vast amount of data collected from sensors, companies are making necessary improvements to deliver better services to their customers. Fortunately, appropriate strategies have turned these challenges into opportunities and given people a new lifecycle as well as has increased customer retention and revenues. Hence, many significant investors have started investing in the Internet of Things, thereby opening up an incredible array of fresh opportunities and innovation for the people to explore

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