By now, it’s no secret that there is value behind implementing an IIoT solution within a facility, but how exactly? Amid economic uncertainty on a global scale, IIoT technologies need to be taken into account to realize some serious cost-savings across an entire organization. The global IIoT market is expected to reach $949.42 billion by 2025, according to a report by Grand View Research Inc. This isn’t surprising as many businesses are realizing the massive amount of ROI when implementing an IoT strategy. Turning a facility into an intelligent one means massive savings in a number of ways. IIoT eases a lot of issues with limited resources and maintaining smart factories with servicing equipment remotely. While you want to start small to maximize your ROI, you’ll quickly understand how this money move will benefit your business.

Predictive analytics- minimizing downtime

Especially in the manufacturing industry, digital manufacturing technologies have a lot of benefits as there is an increased demand for a connected supply chain and collaboration among stakeholders. Implementing IIoT devices allows a plant floor to be flexible and collect data around the facility to help minimize downtime, extend the asset life, increase production, and reduce maintenance costs to name a few of the main benefits. Depending on the operation that’s running, unexpected downtime and emergency repairs can mean millions of dollars in lost revenue. To be able to know when critical equipment is about to reach the end of its lifecycle or malfunction, is invaluable. Sensors can measure temperature, pressure, vibration, rotation speeds, and more depending on the machine, and depending on the set “normal” values in each sensor, they can then signal future issues.

By using IoT predictive maintenance, a report by the CXP Group, indicated that 91 percent of manufacturers see a reduction in repair time and unplanned downtime and 93 percent see improvement of aging industrial infrastructure.

Increased efficiency

The logistics and transport segment within the IIoT market is projected to grow the most. With an increased demand for same-day delivery and shorter delivery times overall, logistics companies need to operate more efficiently- enter IIoT devices. For example, there are Amazon warehouses that function completely autonomously fulfilling orders. IoT-based technologies allow businesses to capture environmental data such as temperature, light exposure, and humidity, that would help maintain the quality of perishable items and reduce waste. IoT-powered systems can also allow supply chain companies to track the location of their vehicles at any time and can also help automate vehicle maintenance and repair schedules.

Increased Safety/Employee costs

Depending on the facility, implementing smart devices can also help increase employee safety by being able to offer remote servicing to equipment and let sensors collect the data rather than using a human resource. According to a PWC report, predictive maintenance in factories could possibly reduce safety, health, environment and quality risks by 14 percent. Wearable IoT also allows employers to understand an employee’s status and work environment. Sensor data can help an employee avoid being exposed to harsh conditions for too long. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 2.78 million people die due to a result of an occupational accident or work-related disease every year. The economic impact of poor occupational safety and health practices is estimated to be at 3.94 percent of global gross domestic product each year. Wearable IoT devices can help decrease this statistic and keep employees safe by having these sensors monitor each person’s heart rate variability.

Energy savings

IoT devices gives a business real-time visibility into how much energy a facility is using. With remote sub-metering, this provides information about electricity consumption at the circuit level. Just using a main electrical meter does not provide the actual source of consumption. IoT devices can be set up to monitor the energy consumption of each circuit. IoT devices can also make a building smarter and can be used autonomously to manage the lighting and HVAC in a facility thereby reducing energy consumption if a certain part of the building isn’t occupied during certain hours of the day. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), they project a nearly 50 percent increase in worldwide energy usage by 2050- this means the call for smarter energy solutions is critical. More businesses are understanding that IoT use cases make a lot of sense for power and energy management and for mission critical facilities, every second of downtime can mean catastrophic results.

According to a recent S&C survey on power reliability, more than a quarter of manufacturing businesses experienced an outage at least once a month in 2017, with 58 percent an outage that was longer than an hour- that translates to millions of dollars lost. Implementing a smart microgrid that would have remote management capabilities with a facility’s HVAC, energy storage systems, combined heat and power, and fuel cells. IoT technologies eases the process of collecting the necessary data from traditional grid resources. By collecting this data, IoT-driven grid management systems can assist with critical functions such as optimizing line voltage to mimize energy losses and line damage, locating the source of outages and surges, improving load balance, and identifying the source of system losses that would reduce the costs of service.

Business Insights

With implementing an IoT solution, comes valuable insights that translates into major dollar signs for any business. As previously mentioned, these analytics can mean collecting real-time predictive analytics for the equipment that is constantly running instead of having valuable resources doing routine maintenance on machines that don’t need it. Understanding how to use those valuable insights is another piece of the puzzle. Many industrial companies have more data than they know what to do with and it can be overwhelming to the point where it might not be to your advantage. The data is only good if you do something with it!

Using collected data beyond detection and controlling anomalies is critical to fully realize the value of IoT data. That data needs to also be used to optimize and predict.

McKinsey reports that if businesses continue to utilize IIoT properly and more intelligently to fully understand all of the collected data and analytics that is now available to them, it could generate up to $11.1 trillion a year in economic value by 2025.