The Factory of the Future is a connected world of everything.

We will explore the benefits of IoT in manufacturing, including asset monitoring and utilization, quality control, predictive analytics, automation, safety and compliance, OEE visibility and productivity, and more.

With IoT solutions, companies can achieve their Industry 4.0 goals and increase their bottom line.

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects, people and other assets that are connected to the internet. IoT allows you to collect data from devices and analyze it in real time.

The goal is to make processes more efficient by optimizing performance and reducing costs.

IoT can be used to monitor machines in factories, track inventory at warehouses or even monitor traffic conditions on roads. It’s also used for home automation tasks like turning off lights when you leave a room or adjusting your thermostat based on your location inside (or outside) the house.

IoT Ecosystems

An IoT ecosystem refers to the network of devices, sensors, software, and services that are interconnected and work together to collect, analyze, and act on data.

They are often utilized to gather data on connected assets, and tools in order to gain real-time insights into their condition for predictive maintenance purposes.

The goal of predictive maintenance is to detect and address problems before they cause equipment failure, downtime, or safety issues.

By predicting maintenance needs in advance, organizations can schedule maintenance during planned downtime, minimize the impact of maintenance on operations, and extend the lifespan of equipment.

Connected Products

A smart, connected product (also known as a smart object or SCoT) is a product, asset, or other object embedded with processors, sensors, software, and connectivity that allows data to be exchanged between the product and its environment, manufacturer, operator/user, and other products and systems[1].

Smart, connected products enable the comprehensive monitoring of a product’s condition, operation, and external environment through sensors and external data sources[2].

This technology stack provides a gateway for data exchange between the product and the user and integrates with other systems to enable a new level of customer experience[3].

Connected Factory

Similar to connected products, a smart, connected factory is a digitized manufacturing facility that uses connected devices, machinery, and production systems to continuously collect and share data.

This data is then used to inform and improve processes and proactively address any issues that may arise.

It is an interconnected network of machines, communication mechanisms, and computing power, which uses advanced technologies to analyze data, drive automated processes and learn as it goes. It uses the sensors and software of the connected products to bring together the factory floor.

A connected factory is implemented to track the overall equipment efficiency or effectiveness (OEE) of the factory.

A smart connected factory is the telltale sign of a manufacturing floor that is functioning at its most optimal ability.

Having access to data insights regarding production health helps companies optimize earnings and minimize production downtime.

Augmented Reality

Integrating augmented reality (AR) with IoT involves using sensors and other IoT devices to collect data from the physical world, which is then used to augment the user’s experience in the digital world.

For example, AR can be used to display real-time data from IoT sensors, such as temperature or humidity, on a user’s mobile device. When a cell phone or tablet uses Augmented Reality (AR) to display data, it overlays virtual information on top of the real-world view seen through the device’s camera.

This can be particularly useful in industrial settings, where workers can use AR to monitor the performance of machines, detect any issues immediately, and take corrective action. This kind of data can be turned into a Digital Twin.

Digital Twin

With a Digital Twin, you create an exact replica of a working product, process, or service as a simulated model in a virtual space that performs under real-world conditions.

A Digital Twin in manufacturing helps companies find performance issues, schedule predictive maintenance, reduce downtime, and minimize warranty expenses.

This allows anyone to take a digital version of your factory with you anywhere in the world and know the exact, real-time data of how it is functioning. This is extremely helpful for decision-makers who often travel and need to know how their factories are doing.

Additionally, a digital twin of your factory helps maintenance teams find precisely where an issue may have occurred by giving them visual prompts of where the problem is originating from.

The Benefits of IoT in Manufacturing

Implementing IoT

The first step in implementing IoT in manufacturing is to identify your goals. Are you looking to improve efficiency, reduce waste or increase profitability?

Do you want to improve customer satisfaction by delivering products on time, or do you want to create new revenue streams with data collected from connected devices?

Once you’ve determined what kind of impact IoT can have on your business, it’s time to evaluate the current technology that’s not only available but that easily integrates with your current systems and shop floor.

Finally, develop an action plan for implementing these strategies broken down into digestible phases. It’s critical to understand what solutions fit best and most align with your unique business and prioritized initiatives.

Common Challenges

We hear from companies all the time regarding what challenges they feel stops them from implementing IoT in manufacturing.

The first is cost. However, with any good investment, the benefits of using IoT solutions offset the cost. While IoT ROI doesn’t happen overnight, the full impact IoT has on manufacturing organizations is tenfold.

NORMA Group met with EAC experts to understand what sort of impact an IoT initiative would have on their business growth and determined the challenges were well worth the wait – something we find other companies can relate to. Another early adopter, JR Automation was able to save $1.4 million by investing in IoT.

Security

The second common challenge that comes with implementing IoT is security. This includes both physical and data security issues that need to be evaluated and addressed before implementing any type of data management change.

Finding a solution with integrated automated tools and detailed monitoring is key to preventing attacks. Check out this article that talks further about data security and how PTC’s Kepware supports cybersecurity.

Data Management

Another challenge we see is considering how well your organization will be able to manage the new information coming from all over your facilities. It’s key you create a plan to integrate the new data flow into your existing systems.

With user-friendly IoT-connected solutions like PTC Thingworx, data is captured, consolidated into a dashboard, and presented in a consumable visual format for real-time insights.

Hardware

Another consideration is requirements: What sort of hardware do you have to support that software change? Replacing or updating existing systems and hardware to increase efficiency may be necessary to keep up with the fast pace environment of shop floors.

There is no doubt that these are important things to consider when making enterprise-wide changes. While implementing IoT can feel difficult and intimidating, it does not have to be.

EAC has a number of business assessments that can help you evaluate your current state and create a highly strategic roadmap to successfully scale your digital transformation initiatives.

Ultimately, Digital Transformation is a game changer for manufacturing companies who are unsatisfied with the “status quo” – and IoT will open up major opportunities for long-term success and sustainable growth that would not have been possible without making changes.

Connected Future

Empower your organization with enhanced connectivity to your products, systems, and customers.

IoT can provide significant advantages for manufacturers across the enterprise, but it is important to properly evaluate, plan and implement the right technology and the right solution at the right time in order to maximize the potential benefits.

Our IoT consulting and connect services provide comprehensive support from extracting valuable insights, and developing strategic plans to executing and implementing efficient IoT solutions that accelerate your digital transformation.

Chat with one of our experts on how we can help you identify the best IoT solution for your needs and how we can help your company implement it the right way.

The very definition of many industries is changing in no small part due to the of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its’ ability to disrupt and generate new business opportunities. Industry leaders across the board are starting to embrace IoT projects, use IoT devices, and build smart connected products using IoT platforms.

This article references real IoT case study stories and internet of things examples from John Deere and Nike to provide you with a better understanding of how the IoT is starting to shake up and disrupt industries.

 To paint you a picture of exactly how the IoT is creating business opportunities for organizations today, let’s start with a company you might already be familiar with – John Deere.

Before the rise of IoT

John Deere has been making tractors and agriculture equipment for over 175 years.

For many years, though, they made simple tractors that weren’t ‘smart’ or connected products, they were just mechanical.

Soon enough, over time, John Deere’s products started to become smart and connected– changing everything for the organization.

Creating smart products & connecting devices

John Deere began to equip their products with digital dashboards, engine control units, sensors to alert users if they are running out gas, if oil pressure is too high, if hydraulic pressure is too low, etc.

By doing so, John Deere began to realize the countless benefits that came along with connecting their agricultural equipment to the internet of things, which eventually would provide the ability to remotely monitor the equipment’s performance.

Now remember, at this point, John Deer was still a tractor company, but as the organization moved forward with their vision of smart connected products, they also created what is called a smart connected product system.

The evolution of a smart connected product system & Digital Transformation

At the heart of John Deer’s product system is what is called a combine harvester. Their combine harvester harvests grain from fields, separates the head or the ear from the stalk, and divides the hulls, cobs, and the husks from the kernels of grain.

Today these smart connected combines have the ability to smartly monitor how many kernels came from a single patch of land, and how many kernels came from another.

In fact, they even collect, store, and send data to the cloud for the following season – so the machine is able to perform what is called a smart planting scheme.

During the smart planting scheme, the tractor hooks up to a tiler, which is basically a plow. As the plow works the soil, the equipment frequently fertilizes it, particularly with nitrogen. The equipment then follows its smart planting scheme – if the yield was low, nitrogen application should be high in a particular spot. If the yield was high, nitrogen should decrease.

Next from the connected product system comes the tractor pulling the planter that puts kernels in the ground for next year’s crop. It’s doing the same thing.

With a wide variety of seeds, the planter makes smart decisions for specific spots as needed. The smart connected equipment even knows when to use different drought resistant seeds in particular dry patches of land.

Smart products and the internet of things

John Deere created their own unique smart connected product system with the equipment they manufacture.  By using smart connected devices, sensors, and building on top of an IoT platform, they slowly started to connect their entire product line.

This breakthrough in farming equipment enabled their products to work together and share data back and forth.

Farmers are now able to correlate their inputs and outputs, while reducing inputs and maximizing outputs. This means productivity and profits.

Taking it a step further, John Deere designed a smart farm system where, depending upon commodity prices, the equipment has the ability to plants different seeds.

Farms that irrigate now have the ability to place sensors in the soil to that read moisture levels. Using this knowledge, the smart equipment is able to determine whether it should apply more or less water to particular locations.

Agricultural equipment can now even assess upcoming weather forecasts and determine if irrigation is critical.

Today, John Deer is leading the way in utilizing IoT in agriculture. 

New business opportunities with IoT

John Deere went from selling tractors to selling sophisticated information systems that can run smart farms.

With the technological advancements around today, a company like John Deere now has to determine the actual business they are in.

IoT presents new industry opportunity

Somewhere along the way, while developing smart connected products, John Deere became a software company and a systems integrator.

The internet of things presented John Deere with an opportunity to compete within an entirely new industry. 

In fact, some say with this the new industry opportunity, John Deere even has the ability to compete with other well-known IT system integrators – such as Accenture.

The internet of things and smart connected products present a very interesting phenomenon, that’s happening right now.

Homes are beginning to transition to smart homes. Automobiles are starting to become smart. It’s happening everywhere you turn, even if in some cases it might be very subtly, or slow.

Products are evolving

Nike is another great example of how the IoT has started to accelerate and transform organizations.

Historically, Nike has made shoes, clothes and sunglasses – but today, their product line is now much more than that.

For Nike, it’s no longer just about clothes and shoes anymore. Their products have evolved from fitness equipment to fitness monitoring systems – driving personal health and wellness goals.

They too, started connecting their products by adding sensors into their shoes, clothes, and Fuel Bands.  This has enabled their smart connected products to help people maintain physical fitness and health.

Businesses possibilities of IoT

With the real-world examples from John Deere and Nike, it’s easy see how businesses are starting to expand their industry boundaries with the internet of things.

The world is changing, smart connected products are continually evolving. What is your organization doing to stay ahead?

Explore the business possibilities of IoT for your organization

Organizations today are adopting valuable IoT solutions to lower operating costs, increase productivity, and develop new products.

The Internet of Things can offer your organization an opportunity to be more efficient whether its connecting devices with automated systems that gather information, analyzing IoT data, creating an action to learn from a process, achieving the pinnacle – remote control, support and maintenance.

We want to help you achieve your IoT objectives

Not sure what the advantages of IoT are for your organization? We would love to help you define and push your boundaries!

Our technology specialists are experts at devising what IoT solutions, devices, projects, and business models are best suited for your organization. Let’s have a conversation.

The internet of things (IoT) is a business and technology revolution. It not only enables the connection and communication with ‘things’ but allows us to manage them.

It allows our organizations to do preventative and predictive maintenance on ‘things’, do guided service on ‘things’, and create digital twins of ‘things’. It enables us to improve operational efficiency, significantly reduce downtime, and to develop new revenue streams.

What makes up the ‘Internet’ in IoT?

The internet is composed of two separate communities; the internet of people and the internet of things or IoT.

The Internet of People

First, let’s break down what we mean by ‘the internet of people.’

The internet of people has grown organically over the past 20 years and has evolved into becoming an interconnected network of billions of people. That’s right, billions. Its primary purpose is to connect people, collate information, and enable people-to-people interaction.

The internet of people allows people to connect by becoming a clearinghouse of information. People post information available to other people, generating a great deal of information that is being pumped into the cloud.

The Internet of Things – IoT

The internet of things has been growing organically for the past 10 years and has the potential to become much larger than the internet of people. Its primary purpose is to connect machines, people, and data.

The IoT also enables people-to-machine and machine-to-machine interactions. In the Internet of Things, things are pumping data into the cloud so products can be monitored, controlled, optimized, and automated. During this process, information and data are streaming into the cloud from both people and things.

Combining the internet of people and things

This leads us to the internet. As mentioned earlier, the internet is the combination of internets of people and things into one integrated network. (Of course, they never were really separate, but it helps to think of them that way to facilitate the study of IoT).

Why are businesses investing in IoT?

The market for IoT is huge! Today there are over 20 billion connected devices, and that number is growing at an incredible pace. With connected devices comes a tremendous upside opportunity for IoT investments.

Through 2020, estimates are as high as 1.6 Trillion dollars! In fact, McKinsy has determined that the economic impact of IoT will top 11 Trillion dollars by 2025! The reason companies are starting to make such big investments in IoT is because so much value can be created.

How the Internet of Things is impacting product value

The internet of things isn’t about the internet – it’s all about the things. The things are what’s changing. The trend of smart connected things is really accelerating now that there’s a computer of sorts inside just about everything! 

Today, according to the US government Census Bureau, there are about seven billion people on the planet Earth. About one-third of these people are connected to the internet with smartphones, tablets, and computers- yet in 2010 we hit an important milestone where there were more things connected to the internet than there were people on Earth This suggests these connected ‘things’ aren’t just smartphones, tablets, and computers anymore – they are fitness bands, thermostats, vehicles and more! This is where real innovation is happening.

Today, almost everything we have around us is capable of connecting. I’m talking about buildings, appliances, machinery, farms, hospitals, cities – all kinds of things. Now there’s a massive investment that is feeding this rapid expansion of the smart connected products – the internet of things solutions market. The IoT solutions market includes the smart connected things, the connectivity services, the software platforms and applications, the security, the analytics, and really everything related to smart connected products.

IoT Development Workshop

At EAC, we want to make sure you don’t miss out on any revolution with respect to potential capabilities that you can add to your products- while we also realize the importance of basing your IoT initiatives around your mission statement. That’s why we created what we call our IoT Development Workshop.

We have made it our mission to help guide organizations like yours to explore and embrace the uncertainty of the emerging IoT market.

System integration is much easier than you might think; here’s why.

The idea of linking business systems and consolidating data, also known as system and data integration, has become a major initiative for many companies – but most organizations have no idea where to start. Why? It’s an overwhelming topic! Organizations operate using any number of complex business systems. The idea of connecting everything seems hard. 

We live in world that is continually being transformed by data, yet much of the data we capture is held captive in disconnected enterprise systems that often include ERP, CRM, PLM, PDM, ALM, and QMS systems to name a few. This article explains why it is much easier to successfully integrate data and systems than you think.

What is system integration and how does it work?

System integration involves linking together component subsystems ensuring those separate, specialized business systems function as a coordinated whole. You might think of system integration a way to aggregate business subsystems so all systems within a business environment cooperate together as one.

The importance of system integration

When all enterprise systems work together as one, an organization is able to obtain new levels of role-based productivity and company-wide collaboration.

By combining disparate systems that operate with their own distinct data sets, an organization can improve product quality and performance, reduce operational costs, improve response times, and increase overall value to customers. We’ve watched our customers recognize exponential returns as more systems and users come together. It’s much easier to combine and integrate systems and data than you might think and let’s talk about why.

System integration solutions exist!

The problem with integrating systems/data is not a lack of technology – great system integration solutions exist! In fact, there are numerous connectivity tools and software applications available on the market today, that can simplify and speed up system integration. Many of these connectivity tools work in real-time, between data warehouses, software applications, IoT platforms and more!

Connectivity tools, such as applications and system plugins, enable organizations to easily create an environment of integrated data and information. These environments help manage the business itself and automate many tedious back-office functions related to technology, services, and human resources.

Take product lifecycle management applications (PLM apps) for example.

PLM applications connect all system data (from systems such as ERP, CRM, PLM, PDM, ALM, QMS, & more) and easily transform that data into a single interface with instant visualization. This allows someone from purchasing to instantly access materials, inventory and any other information they might need – without disrupting certain system operators. Furthermore, chances are that a partner from one of your current enterprise systems already is or has a system integration expert that can help you integrate your enterprise systems. (but in the case that you don’t, our company EAC Product Development solutions is capable and happy to help – it is one of many areas that we specialize)

Systems Integration tools are easy to implement

Today many enterprise system platforms can multiplex the reach of information and functionality that you already have on your business and make it reachable.

The steady shift of business systems into web-based connected architectures has made it easier than ever to connect enterprise systems! As a matter of fact, enterprise systems that you’re already using are likely to already have built-in application program interface (API) capabilities.

These built in API capabilities allow applications to talk to each other, while specifying how software components should interact. It boils down to this; get the right software to leverage your system’s API capabilities and you’re on your way to integrate business systems.

System data integration platforms can be affordable

Not only are there many integration applications and tools available on market today, but many of these connectivity solutions are becoming more and more affordable.

One of the greatest benefits of system integration solutions is that they oftentimes cost only a fraction of what it would cost to implement an entirely new enterprise system to do something! And the benefits quickly outweigh the costs when your productivity levels spike!

Integration applications are easy to use:

It’s now easier and less risky than ever to use data integration tools. In fact, many integration applications are designed with the user in mind.

Today many system data integration applications incorporate extremely easy-to-use, ready out-of-the-box features and capabilities! A great example is a tool like ThingWorx, PTC Navigate, or EAC Productivity Apps. These tools are designed to quickly provide integrated access to timely relevant information.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to make the most out of your enterprise system data by integrating your systems.

Need help getting started? That’s what EAC Product Development Solutions is here for. It’s our job to make your system integration smooth, easy, and effortless. Let’s talk about the next steps. We would love to help you find a system integration solution that fits your organizational needs. Fill out the form to have someone from EAC contact you about integrating all of your systems, once and for all!