Internet of Things Aiding the Manufacturing Sector

access_time June 4, 2019
by   TechmavenitAdmin
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The Internet of Things (IoT) is playing a significant role in our social and economic lives and its imprint is manifest in every sphere of human activity. And, as with the other sectors where IoT technological revolution is playing crucial roles, our manufacturing sector has also come to be affected by IoT implementation in a big way. It has reached a point where it has made tracking and controlling manufacturing process sitting in an office, an easy job. We popularly term this process as the “smart manufacturing process” Smart Manufacturing Smart manufacturing is essentially a platform that integrates several technologies such as connectivity technologies, the cloud, big data analytics etc to provide a more optimized manufacturing process. It is in short the use of IoT devices to improve the efficiency and productivity of manufacturing operations. This typically involves retrofitting sensors to existing manufacturing equipment, but now, most new manufacturing equipments come with IoT sensors pre- installed. The implementation of smart manufacturing process has helped companies automate the entire manufacturing process and helped raise production – output substantially. Enabling virtual tracking and monitoring of capital assets, processes, resources and products, smart manufacturing gives enterprises full visibility which in turn supports streamlining business processes and optimizing supply and demand. Due to the immense benefits that smart manufacturing brings to companies, it is seen that smart manufacturing is being increasingly adopted by manufacturing industries, both small and large. BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service expects the installed base of manufacturing IoT devices to swell to 923 million by 2020. It is also expected that by then, manufacturers will have spent approximately $ 267 billion on the IoT. The internet of things as we generally refer to, is the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity which enables these objects to connect and exchange data. Each item is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to interoperate within the existing internet infrastructure. Though the majority of IoT solutions in manufacturing presently are still basic, manufacturers will over the years, implement more complex technologies such as autonomous robots and augmented reality tools. Smart manufacturing also aims to take advantage of and put in to production processes advanced information, analytical capabilities and insights from the physical world. Smart manufacturing making use of insights With smart manufacturing, organizations can predicatively meet business needs through intelligent and automated actions driven by previously inaccessible insights from the physical world. Cisco, in an effort to better orchestrate its global network of outsourced production plants, developed a virtual manufacturing execution system platform that offers real-time visibility of production operations. Using technologies such as cloud, Big data analytics, and IoT to connect and gather real- time information from production machines, enabling predictive quality capabilities in a fully outsourced manufacturing environment. Word of caution Though the implementation of IoT in manufacturing will bring several benefits, its implementation also brings in certain challenges that need to be tackled to achieve maximum effectiveness. The threat of cyber attack is always a distinct possibility and one needs to be extra vigilant to eliminate every form of cyber attack. With companies always on the lookout for increasing profitability quotient, there arises the fact that there is no way we can measure the ROI on the expenses incurred in implementing IoT solutions. There also exists the technical difficulty of integrating the IoT in to a factory set up, as also the wider possibility of large scale objection from people who feel their jobs are at stake.

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