IoT technologies are everywhere– whether you’re working on a specialized manufacturing site, caring for patients at a healthcare facility, charging up your smart EV, or simply sitting in an office with an app-adjusted climate, you’re probably surrounded by several IoT devices right now. They’re one of the most multi-faceted tools of this generation of technology; not only are they able to detect problems, they can empower rapid responses and churn out actionable insights for predicting and preventing future issues.
Technology, no matter the type or use case, often evolves at a rapid pace. But without a well-rounded understanding of the improvements and opportunities, blind spots arise. These blind spots in your technology can be just as dangerous as blind spots in your vehicle– and the faster you’re going, the more important it is to have them covered.
A note on AI and IoT
In a recent episode of The UPSTACK Podcast, UPSTACK Managing Director, Michael Rafferty shared that only 25% of manufacturing companies are able to gather useful data from operating floors, and similar numbers can be assumed across all enterprises.
“Those who do it well still don’t do it to completion. There are a lot of digital blind spots within organizations where they’re just not gathering data[..] and that’s a problem,” Rafferty explains. “The phrase digital transformation was very popular and that has been replaced by AI in popularity, and with the confluence of AI coming onto the scene, what does that really mean?”
In use-cases ranging from healthcare environments to commerce, public transit to self-driving cars, and so many more, AI and IoT can team up as a powerhouse, Forbes reveals, stating that “[w]hile IoT may have been around for several years, recent technological advances such as better connectivity, cloud, machine learning, artificial intelligence and related analytics, and low-cost sensors have helped IoT gallop. With increasing data volumes, we are facing challenges in absorbing, interpreting and making informed decisions.”
“‘Businesses are trying to use AI in IoT but they don’t have nearly as complete a picture of the data that they want, so the AI is not nearly as successful as it can be until they start getting those data points aggregated,” Rafferty notes.
The truth is, there is no single, flawless use-case for IoT. However, there are certain applications that simply make sense– and certain aspects that can prolong the life of machines, improve product yields, and help transform raw data into actionable insights. Keep reading to get familiar with them.
1. Asset tracking
Highly specialized environments often call for extremely expensive and sometimes quite delicate machines. We see this often in specialized manufacturing sectors, like aviation, aeronautics, and defense contracting, where lives ride on the efficacy of equipment– both for those working in the manufacturing field and for those utilizing the equipment after it’s been created.
One of the worst-case-scenarios in this environment could be an undetected malfunction that leads to an unusable yielded product, rendering the often complex and cumbersome manufacturing process a waste and the product a failure. When the health and efficiency of the final product is paramount, and the process is expensive and complex, it’s crucial to nail down issues and resolve them as early as possible. That’s where IoT comes in – specifically in the form of asset tags.
With sensors boasting sizes as small as stamps, resilience in difficult environments, and the emerging wonder of self-sustaining, battery-less circuits, asset tags have emerged as a versatile and convenient way to monitor machine health. Think of it as an Apple watch for your equipment– it sits on the surface and gauges factors like heat and vibration to diagnose potential issues in machine efficiency. This is a crucial part of predictive maintenance, wherein companies are able to detect, diagnose, and solve problems before they greatly affect operations, saving time, money, and resources in the process. The data gleaned from asset tags can potentially save hours of guesswork and six-figure sums of ruined specialized products, helping flag a problem before it truly takes hold of the manufacturing process. We’ve seen firsthand the improvement asset tags bring about. UPSTACK worked with a customer who had a complex 35-step manufacturing process, who utilized asset tags to monitor their machine health. Through this technology, the company was able to identify a flaw in the 2nd step of that lengthy process, allowing them to correct the issue, fix the machine in question, and get a complete yield. Without this early diagnosis, there could have been many more flawed products, much more waste, and a huge amount of hours spent on sleuthing out the cause– between identifying the machine, locating the problem within that machine, and working on a fix.
2. Environmental
As we mentioned, IoT is commonplace in sensitive environments, including healthcare and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG). In these delicate conditions, environmental monitoring is crucial to ensuring the success and health of not only your technology, but the people who benefit from it.
Factories and warehouses can find products devastated by environmental issues, including temperature, humidity, air pressure, and more– especially when the products created and housed inside are of a sensitive nature. From the parts that keep planes in flight to the heart monitors used in NICUs across the country, there are certain manufacturing products that can truly be life or death for users– and as such, a single malfunction in the manufacturing and storage environment can have disastrous consequences.
IoT devices from smart thermostats to pressure sensors can help regulate and detect issues in these environments from the second they occur, and can speed up the mitigation process with remote control options and automated failsafes.
Paired with predictive analytics, IoT packs a threefold punch: the ability to foresee a problem, to pinpoint it, and to solve it, all in a matter of moments. Doug Robertson, COO at automation solutions provider Shelly USA, tells Techopedia: “Managers and relevant personnel can monitor environmental conditions remotely through IoT platforms,” he notes. “The system can also send alerts in case of deviations from predefined thresholds, ensuring prompt response to potential issues.”
Per Forbes, predictive maintenance helped Deloitte reduce maintenance planning by anywhere from 20% – 50%. The availability of equipment and uptime have increased by 10% – 20%, while maintenance costs have reduced by 5%-10%. This is a resounding call to action: it’s time for early intervention and data-driven fixes, and we finally have the technology to make it happen.
Interestingly, IoT’s environmental monitoring and mitigation qualities can help with the environment, too– from wildfire detection and response to air quality improvements and even radiation management, IoT’s powerful pinpointing abilities are being employed worldwide to improve environmental standards– yet another way the tech industry is enhancing global sustainability.
3. Diagnostics, data visualization, and edge computing
As IoT success stories become more commonplace, companies are finding the decision to adopt IoT technology, including asset tracking for predictive maintenance, is far easier to pin down.
In 2023, P&G, manufacturer of Pampers, made it their mission to perfect the diaper manufacturing process with IoT. Thousands of diapers were lost to errors in manufacturing, and had to be discarded due to damage. Paired with predictive analysis by Microsoft and Azure cloud for manufacturing, P&G’s IoT endeavor saved an estimated 70% of what would be discarded diapers across 11 plants.
However, as illustrated in the P&G effort, raw data from IoT devices is just one piece of the larger equation of machine health– another is edge computing, a powerhouse accompanying all things IoT. Edge computing provides an additional layer of security and cuts down on the time loop of collecting, storing, visualizing, and reporting data, allowing for advanced synthesis of data collected from IoT devices to be done on-site.
Red Hat summarizes the relationship as follows: “Edge computing, a strategy for computing on location where data is collected or used, allows IoT data to be gathered and processed at the edge, rather than sending the data back to a datacenter or cloud. Together, IoT and edge computing are a powerful way to rapidly analyze data in real-time.”
For the often sensitive use-cases and environments where IoT truly thrives, edge computing provides a leg-up on security, allowing data to be kept on-prem. This greatly reduces the risk, as data no longer needs to be sent out to the public or hybrid cloud and back. Reducing the travel time and distance of data also reduces the potential for that data to be targeted by bad actors.
Edge devices can “perform intelligent processing and analytics tasks locally without constant communication with a centralized server,” allowing for a malleable decentralized architecture that churns out actionable and well-organized representations of data. As one of the greatest issues with IoT is the lack of efficient data collection, processing, and usage, edge technology is the perfect pairing to accelerate the usability and efficacy of an IoT investment.
UPSTACK’s insights
Protecting expensive assets– smart cars, remote healthcare monitoring devices, manufacturing equipment, and more– is crucial to many who invest in these assets. IoT presents a new and exciting potential for holistic protection, but as with any technology, planning a smooth integration and coupling IoT with complementary technologies is necessary for making the investment truly work.
As Michael Rafferty shared his opinion in The UPSTACK Podcast: “When looking back, if only 25% of companies are effectively gathering data today, I would’ve expected it to have been a lot higher of an adoption level by 2024. But that just provides more opportunity moving forward, right?”
UPSTACK is here to help you make the most of the new and exciting opportunities IoT presents. Our experts can help you outfit a secure solution that maximizes the potential of collected data and helps transform your maintenance and management for the better.
Get in touch with our IoT experts to learn how we can help you!
