Our voice on the Internet of Things, Ravikumar Jeevarathinam, reviews the increasingly compelling case for incorporating the IoT into business transformation initiatives in his latest article published in CIO Advisor APAC.
IoT is starting to play a central role in every company's digital transformation strategy. There are many IoT use cases for accelerating business transformation - whether for top line growth through introducing innovative new products/solutions/services, or for improving the bottom line through optimising costs and increasing operational efficiency.
Industry 4.0 is all about convergence of Computing, Connectivity and Cognitivity embedded with added security.
At LRQA Aurora, our digital innovation practice, we work with clients across industries to help them gain maximum benefit from their IoT investments. Some key areas where we see the IoT delivering significant and measurable returns include:
Productivity
IoT-enabled automation is already enhancing productivity, thereby accelerating business growth. For example, sensing technologies are helping to automate manufacturing plants as well as monitor the health of machines in any environment, including those that are remotely located.
"Connecting the unconnected" - by retrofitting equipment with sensors - allows machine health to be diagnosed in real-time, enabling proactive intervention. This prevents unscheduled maintenance and downtime, resulting in lower operational spending and the avoidance of major business loss and unforeseen liabilities.
Customer experience
IoT is also greatly enhancing the customer experience in areas from retail to waste management. One example is a connected retail environment, in which checkout can be fully automated with no need to queue for a till. In a smart city environment, meanwhile, sensor-enabled garbage bins allow the schedules and routes of garbage trucks to be optimised.
Safety and security
The IoT has many applications in the areas of safety and security. Consider a battery used at a railway crossing. Equipping it with sensors can prevent theft as well as monitoring the health of the battery. If someone tries to remove the battery, an alarm is triggered and the location data can help to locate the thief. In this use case, IoT not only improves security, it also prevents disruption to rail traffic and even helps to prevent accidents.
A few highlights below help with the acceleration of IoT business cases across all industry segments
- Sensor technology advancements, from LiDAR to audio/image sensors to instrumentation sensors improve device management capabilities with cost effectiveness and seamless deployment
- Edge computing and edge analytics help localised and distributed decision-making, reducing the latency and cost of bandwidth
- Easy access to Artificial Intelligence libraries adds a "sixth sense" to sensor networks for self-learning and self-healing
- Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) connectivity is helping to reduce the cost of connectivity with varied options to fit the business models
- Extended battery life for edge devices is being made possible with advancements in low power technologies with ultra-low currents, optimised communication protocols, edge analytics and low power connectivity
- Cyber Security is further strengthened in edge devices with the help of edge computing, device management and advancement in connectivity protocols
IoT is digitalising the world from home automation to industry automation, spanning from manufacturing, utilities, transport, smart cities, healthcare, security, logistics, energy, retail, airports, oil & gas, shipping, and so on. Most of the market forecasts and trends clearly show IoT continues to fuel trillion-dollar market growth with tens of billions of connected devices.
Leveraging the technology advancements mentioned above, bundled with open sources, can offer low cost/high value business models. A pilot project (that can easily scale) is an effective way to prove the value proposition and make the IoT end to end solution deployment more attractive.
Learn more about LRQA Aurora
LRQA Aurora, our digital innovation practice, helps organisations in asset-intensive sectors to harness the IoT to enhance productivity, compliance, safety and security towards business growth.
At LRQA Aurora, our digital innovation practice, we work with clients across industries to help them gain maximum benefit from their IoT investments.
To learn more, or to discuss a pilot project, visit the LRQA Aurora website or get in touch.
