According to a GSMA study, IoT connections within smart manufacturing will grow at a rate of over 30% annually, increasing the number of devices to more than 600 million. Digital transformations through IoT technologies deliver significant potential to industrial organisations, enabling them to continuously monitor equipment, implement predictive maintenance, and leverage IoT data analytics to derive valuable business intelligence.

Industrial Revolution 4.0

The increased adoption of industrial IoT, or IIoT, solutions is ultimately contributing to the digitalisation of legacy processes and equipment, ushering in the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR). The most powerful use cases that IIoT delivers help industrial businesses remain competitive in a continuously evolving industry and drive manufacturers to invest in smart factories with IIoT.

These use cases are:

1. Data-Driven Design: Learnings from systems or machine operations are fed back into the design of these assets and the underlying components and subsystems.
2. Data as a Service: On-demand access to relevant, real-time data streams in easy-to-use formats for aggregation and analysis.
3. Real-Time Visibility: Live monitoring of assets, production, and operations to proactively identify and resolve issues.
4. Predictive Maintenance: Real-time machine performance data is correlated with contextual datasets to determine optimal and individualised maintenance cycles.
5. Inventory Planning: Demand sensing leverages real-time internal, business,
   and external data to enable more accurate inventory levels and replenishment planning.

OEMs: Driving IIoT Adoption and Enabling Customers

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are driving the adoption of industrial IoT thanks to the many benefits they see, including additional revenue sources through new SaaS business models, increased spare parts revenues and improved inventory management, lower warranty costs, increased customer satisfaction and stickiness, reduced time from POC to implementation, and eliminating IT barriers that held back deployments.

The benefits of IIoT are shared with the OEMs’ customers and end-users as well and include increased machine uptime, reduced maintenance resources, lower energy costs, and reduced IT resources.  

Three Phases of IIoT Transformation

4IR requires a strategy and step-by-step approach, driven by understanding the challenges and opportunities that Industry 4.0 brings. A UK manufacturers’ organisation came up with a 4IR Journey for UK manufacturers, consisting of three stages: conception, evolution, and revolution.

The first phase is conception, which is when companies figure out what 4IR encompasses, what it can offer and how it could apply to their business. The second phase is evolution, when concepts and off-the-shelf solutions can be implemented and tested, further optimising current processes and putting in place new solutions. The final phase is revolution, which is when the step-change occurs in terms of how value is derived, and how interaction with customers and suppliers happens.

Partnering for Optimisation and Efficiency

Once OEMs understand the why and how of IIoT transformation and 4IR, it’s important to also consider the who. Companies like KORE can provide a myriad of services and solutions, including an IIoT platform that can be customised to equipment, metrics, and reporting needs in order to optimise production output and efficiency.

To learn more about the importance of integration IIoT, watch the on-demand replay of the Hannover Messe IIoT Infrastructure Online Conference 2021 keynote address by Marco Bijvelds, Senior Vice President, EAP at KORE.