IoT Trends in Manufacturing
Internet of Things famously known as IoT, a new growing trend which has widely gaining popularity in all field of life’s; especially in manufacturing industry. It’s a dream of every manufacturer to reduce process cost, fast deliveries, more production in same time, less outages, customers’ satisfaction, remove bottlenecks in supply chain and new inventories. Implementation of above all things needs a lot of man power to perform tasks which ultimately leads to high production costs. Now, what’s the solution? IoT make this possible by introducing different equipments e.g. sensors, transmitters, redundant processors, signal transmitting modules, Ethernet, central processors, internet and distributed control system make this possible to get online data, to analyze, foresee the futures actions and take decisions as per requirements.
Question arises that why there was a need to invent such systems in manufacturing industry? Due to massive increase in population, there is always mismatch of supply and demand which creates competition among competitors to enter in the customer market and get first place to capture the market. It was the time for manufacturers to adopt such a system which is more capable for producing more as compared to old days. Data is the backbone of IoT which comes from online sensors, installed at field sites. Now this data needs to be sent to processors via transmitters and then processors are capable enough to read, analyze and produce process results as per algorithm design and in final stage such data and final results are stored on clouds from where the relevant persons may fetch that data by using dedicated IPs. At this stage, the owners or top management is in position to see this information from any corner of the world and took decision as they require.
Benefits of IoT application are tremendous in terms of cost saving, efficiency, reliability, fast decision making, inventory management, supply chain management and human safety. Sensors are the first line of defence in terms of sensing any abnormal condition which reproduced in the form of data which is stored in clouds. At this stage, the processors are powerful enough to decide what needs to be done and may suggest replacing of any faulty part ora whole equipment. This modernization makes comfort for engineers to take quick decisions which ultimately reflect in production growth, improving quality and efficiency of process.
In manufacturing say process industry, all processes are interconnected with each other means each process’s output is the input of next process. In case of any interruption in any process will leads to delay in next process and ultimately whole production line will stop. In such scenario, loss is ultimate result not only material, equipment, time, timely deliveries but also good reputation in market, is also on stake. IoT makes it more reliable to diagnose any fault with the help of online data comes continuously from filed sensors. There is an issue with IoT which is security risk because the data is transmitted on internet which may be compromised. But governmental rules & its implementation and implementation of proper internet security protocols may avoid such unwanted situation.
Therefore; IoT trends are widely adopted and gaining popularity across the manufacturing industry because of its tremendous benefits regarding saving process cost, reliability, safety, data storage and productivity.