Internet of Things (IoT) emerged merely as a concept in the early 2000s, and as we approach 2022, trends show that this technology is here to stay. According to a report by Findstack, there will be 35.82 billion IoT devices installed worldwide by 2021 and 75.44 billion by 2025.
IoT solutions play an important role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0). It has accelerated productivity, ROI, and customer experience. Industries like manufacturing have already integrated the use of IoT into their processes which proved beneficial for both the producer and the consumer.
According to ALLIED MARKET RESEARCH, the global IoT in manufacturing market size was valued at $424 million in 2016 and is expected to reach $994 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 13.1% from 2017 to 2023.
Benefits of IoT in Manufacturing
In this digital era, industries strive to find new and innovative solutions to keep up with increasing customer expectations, demand for better and faster service, and the complexity of the global supply chain.
IoT is a one-stop solution for all the above problems. With its advanced capabilities of analytics and cognitive computing, IoT has helped create a smoother and efficient work environment.
Here are some benefits of IoT in manufacturing:
- IoT helps in identifying and solving the issue before they cause delay, therefore creating an efficient workflow.
- With cognitive operations, the manufacturing industrial unit can increase the production quality and yield the benefits from raw stuff, and manufactured components.
- It helps in making a safer work environment by allowing the managers to monitor workers’ health state and risky activities that can lead to injuries.
- IoT helps in reducing operational costs and search time by optimizing asset and inventory management.
IoT use cases in Manufacturing
According to MARKETS AND MARKETS, the global IoT application in manufacturing market size is expected to grow from USD 33.2 billion in 2020 to USD 53.8 billion in 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.1% during the forecast period. Let us now learn about the reason behind this growth rate.
Top use cases of IoT in manufacturing:
Quality assurance
IoT has transformed the standard quality control process into a proactive quality control process with the help of thermal and video sensors. These IoT solutions help in collecting complete product data through different stages of a product cycle.
IoT gives manufacturers a stronger assurance of detecting quality problems by allowing monitoring of both equipment settings and the outcomes of each production step. This way problems can be solved before they cause delay.
Supply chain management
IoT plays an important role in managing a whole supply chain in a manufacturing unit. It automates the warehouse tasks by digitalizing paperwork and allowing real-time tracking of assets and products.
Digitizing the supply chain with IoT gives cross-channel visibility to supply chain managers with a realistic estimate of available materials, the arrival of new materials, and work-in-progress, optimizing shared costs in the value chain.
IoT prepares the manufacturers to receive the final product by tracking the speed of movement and traffic flow of raw materials. This improves the handling time and enables more efficient processing of those materials for production. Furthermore, it helps in avoiding any manufacturing mistakes.
Digital twins
Digital twins are virtual or simulated real-world objects that help manufacturers test changes and simulate the impact without actually rolling out any physical changes.
It is amongst the most advanced IoT applications that allow manufacturers to test changes without spending any extra money. If the test results turn out to be beneficial then the manufacturer can physically run the changes, otherwise, leave the settings as they are.
Digital twins help in continual improvement in the creation of product design and engineering activities.
Predictive maintenance
IoT provides the health and performance data of IoT-connected devices to the manufactures that give the maintenance teams a better understanding of when equipment needs to be serviced.
With IoT, manufacturers can closely monitor variables to establish a threshold that can predict impending machine failure. Furthermore, predictive maintenance allows manufacturers to get the absolute most out of their maintenance spend while reducing downtime as much as possible.
Product traceability
It’s often challenging for manufacturers to track a product’s movement and its location which often results in delayed project delivery. But with IoT devices, manufacturers can track the product anytime and from anywhere.
The real-time tracking of products helps manufacturers get a clear idea of the product stage thus saving time and cost, and ensuring faster delivery to market.
Wrapping up
By now you must have a clear understanding of how the integration of IoT can transform the whole manufacturing process. Top manufacturing companies have already started to implement IoT for acquiring real-time data to monitor machines, track performance, and foresee equipment failure. If you too want to hop on this digital wagon, then partnering with the best IoT service provider company like Jellyfish Technologies is the right choice.
Comprehending the fundamental shift in the technology, Jellyfish Technologies, has swiftly established itself as an innovative IoT Development Company. Jellyfish Technologies provides end-to-end solutions to IoT product development starting from the designing, prototyping, hardware development, integration to the cloud and third-party vendors’ APIs.
