Top IoT Use Cases Across Industries

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the concept of connecting physical objects to the Internet so that they can be either controlled or monitored remotely, with the goal of gaining insights that improve personal or business outcomes.

There is a wide variety of ways IoT can add value to both the private and public sectors, and a multitude of applications of IoT technologies across various industries, including…

Connected Health

• Virtual Wards: By using IoT-connected devices to remotely monitor patients and virtually connect them to providers, healthcare IoT creates “virtual wards” that help free up vital hospital beds and prevent costly, unnecessary doctor visits. It also enables the aging population to live independently longer while offering healthcare to individuals with disabilities or who live in remote areas.
• Hospital Bed Management: Show current load of emergency rooms or general practice rooms to reduce wait times. This helps increase revenue, lessen the burden on healthcare providers, and improve the patient experience.
• Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM): Monitor health and activity for chronic disease management and wellness (fitness trackers, other consumer wearables). RPM can reduce readmission rates and improve overall health outcomes, while freeing up vital hospital space.
• Independent Living: Enable individuals with dementia to live alone via drug management, bed sensors, and GPS-enabled movement trackers. Provide them with easy-to-use modern tablets for simple communication needs.
• Drug Management: Control medication dosage remotely to reduce readmission rates and improve health outcomes.
• Remote Monitoring of Medical Hardware: Ensure proper performance of medical equipment to predict maintenance and increase machine utilisation.
• Staff Operations: Equip hospital staff (doctors, nurses, administration, cleaning) with connected devices (e.g., tablets) to improve staff efficiency and improve workflow, which is vital during a pandemic and subsequent staffing shortages.

Agriculture

• Smart Farming: Data collected from remote sensors notify farmers on water, feed, and cleanliness levels – all in real time.
• Harvesting: By using IoT sensors to detect and predict weather patterns, harvesters can cut time and money by optimising their yields.
• Precision Agriculture: Includes predictive analytics, wherein data is used in conjunction with Artificial Intelligence (AI) for predicative monitoring that can help farmers identify changes in weather and soil conditions before they occur.
• Biodiversity: AI is also used to sense and classify objects to gauge the biodiversity of a farm, which is vital to its fertility and success in producing food.
• Food Security: Data-driven agroecosystem work to ensure food security in the face of draughts and other hazardous weather events exacerbated by climate change. 
• Feed Automation: Sensors are installed inside the feed bin, or silo, which periodically measures the level of feed. Then data is communicated via cellular connectivity to the cloud and viewed via a dashboard. This allows farmers to stave off waste by providing the exact amount of feed that farms need, exactly when they need it. Sustainability is supported by having less truck deliveries of feed because the guesswork in demand is eliminated.
• Labour Shortages: IoT solutions, such as feed automation, lessen the demand for physical labour, thereby reducing cost.

Utilities and Energy

• Solar/wind monitoring: Monitor solar and wind energy generation to detect any failure or abnormal decrease in energy efficiency.
• Solar/wind control: Control the positioning of panels and turbines to optimise location for maximum power production.
• Water monitoring: Monitor water levels, pressure, turbidity, Ph, salinity, ORP, flow, etc., to prevent overflows, track drinking water supply, and monitor the wastewater network and treatment operations.
• Backup power monitoring: Monitor backup power levels to prevent complete service breakdown due to failure of battery back-up.
• Storage (tanks) monitoring: Monitor oil and gas storage tanks to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness vs. manual checks.
• Electricity poles monitoring: Monitor major tilting as a result of strong wind, traffic accidents, earth movements, etc. to conduct preventative maintenance.
• Connected circuit breakers: Add connectivity to circuit breakers to gain new capabilities for metering, analysing power usage at the edge, and selectively cutting electricity to power-hungry appliances to prevent blackouts.
• Connected meters: Monitor and optimise infrastructure in real time to detect leaks and breakdowns, automate billing, and remotely activate / deactivate services.
• Field operations: Equip service technicians with connected hardware, e.g. tablets, to improve worker efficiency. This also helps improve employee experience.

Manufacturing

• Asset or fleet tracking in supply chain: Oversee components of the supply chain (raw materials, containers, and finished goods) to optimise logistics, maintain stocks of work in progress, and disclose thefts and violations. Raise technicians’ safety, bring down inventory damage, reduce insurance payments.
• Predictive maintenance: Monitor the state of manufacturing equipment and field devices to predict maintenance before costly repairs or replacement. Increase machine utilisation.
• Remote production control: Oversee machinery in the process of production centrally to ensure safe automated production, monitor workers, track personnel location and remotely manage factory units.
• Connected operations: Connect machines / equipment to disparate operational data centers and unify them to identify problems quicker and improve operational performance. Enable real-time data visibility across assorted manufacturing systems. Enable connected operational intelligence for the smart factory.
• Compliance monitoring: Monitor equipment in real time to increase compliance and safety adherence. This helps lower business risk.
• Field operations: Equip service technicians with connected devices to improve worker efficiency.
• Digital twins: Work with digital replicas of equipment and goods. Monitor new equipment in a virtual environment before putting it to market or simulate a lifespan of machines. Check updates. All to predict potential issues and bottlenecks before putting a new machine into production.

Smart Home

• Smart home: Connect devices in your home to improve lifestyle, enhance security, reduce energy consumption.
• Air quality monitoring: Monitor air quality in different rooms to improve tenant safety.
• Predictive maintenance: Monitor state of building assets (lighting, HVAC, energy, elevator, doors, ...) to predict maintenance before costly repair or replacement.
• Remote lighting control: Allow tenants and building staff remote control of lighting to increase energy efficiency, increase operational efficiency, improve tenant experience.
• Parking management: Monitor available parking space and entrance/exits of car parks to improve operational efficiency, improve tenant experience, and reduce staff.
• Remote temperature control: Monitor, manage, and control heat, ventilation, and air conditioning to increase energy efficiency and improve tenant experience.
• Smart security: Monitor and control connected locks, and install video surveillance of critical areas to reduce staff and lower business risk.
• Occupancy density monitoring: Monitor occupancy density at work desks and key in-office work areas to increase employee productivity, improve tenant and employee experience.
• Field operations: Equip facility managers with connected devices to improve worker efficiency.
• Self-touring / building access: Equip rental property with connected locks or lock boxes to reduce touring effort and cost and improve renter experience.

Transportation & Logistics

• Fleet management: Get real-time fleet information (e.g., the location, or the condition of important parts of vehicles like tyre pressure or coolant level) with customised dashboards. Monitor truck loads. Monitor driver behaviour and performance. This lets you make real-time business decisions and achieve operational efficiency.
• Micromobility: Monitor a fleet of scooters or e-bikes deployed to cities or campuses for battery status, location, or tampering, to offer improved mobility for your constituents.
• Smart inventory and warehouse management: Get real-time information across the warehouse, distribution, and production center. Optimise space and locate packages in the most optimal place. Optimise stocking levels and thus management of small storage space.
• Supply chain management and asset tracking: Track and authenticate products and shipments, and monitor the storage conditions of products. Identify theft or shipment delays and optimise your logistics and quality management.
• Worker safety: Monitor compliance in hazardous environments (i.e., radiation exposure) as well as COVID-19 contact tracing. Reduce safety violations by better understanding how long workers are exposed to harmful chemicals, viruses, or hazardous environments. This lowers business risk and improves employee experience.
• Predictive maintenance: Monitor state of warehouse equipment to predict maintenance before costly repair or replacement.

Smart Cities

• Public space surveillance: Monitor public spaces, including military and border patrol as well as emergency response operations through connected security cameras, and interpret data through modern AI solutions, mainly to increase public safety.
• Road & traffic management: Obtain data from CCTV feeds and transfer vehicle-related data to city traffic control centers, to have better-organised traffic systems that result in a smoother flow of traffic and fewer idle automobiles, buses, and trucks stuck in traffic jams. Achieve shorter run times, more efficient use of natural resources (e.g., gas), and lower pollution.
• Infrastructure monitoring & control: Monitor and control infrastructure, such as railways, roads, bridges, airport facilities, buses, trains, energy facilities, traffic lights, lights, garbage cans. Reduces repair & maintenance costs, and improves citizen experience.
• Parking management: Monitor available parking space and entrance/exits of parking lots or garages to manage demand and optimise space utilisation. Offer personalised parking guidance and a way to reserve a spot. Enable dynamic parking prices and detect overstay violations. This helps increase city revenues and improve the citizen experience.
• Digital signage: Provide crime alerts, disaster and emergency information, wayfinding services in public buildings and streets, interactive educational and art exhibits; improve interoffice and interdepartmental communication; decrease perceived wait times in places like passport and DMV offices – all to provide information to communities, enhance cultural experiences, or even to save lives and protect citizens.
• Public transportation: Monitor vehicle location, engine status, and traffic density; implement real-time security surveillance; offer passenger Wi-Fi; implement automated passenger ticketing and digital signage in buses, trains and stations – all to improve routing or dispatching efficiency, reduce repair & maintenance cost, and improve citizen experience, while increasing revenue.
• Disaster prevention: Monitor temperature, water levels, or seismic activity to combat forest fires and protect land, safeguard power plants, save lives / rescue people, and plan for the future.
• Waste management: Monitor state of garbage disposal areas to reduce truck rolls, improve operational efficiency and citizen experience.

Retail

• Automated Checkout: Equip brick & mortar staff with portable POS terminals or weave the checkout process into the shopping process itself through shelving  sensors, connected cameras, and AI. Improves the shopper's experience and staff efficiency, prevents theft, and  helps foster customer loyalty.
• Connected POS machines: Equip POS terminals with reliable cellular connectivity to improve reliability and remotely control functionality.
• Store layout and shopper experience optimisation: Use in-store experience and movement data collected from smart sensors, connected cameras, and AI to better organise store layout, predict wait times, optimise time spent at fitting rooms, and create a system of intelligent suggestions.
• Predictive equipment maintenance: Monitor equipment in real time and notify managers in case of malfunctioning, to prevent waste, and reputational and monetary losses.
•  Inventory management / optimisation: Connect vending machines or other consumer-facing dispensing devices to predict restocking needs and adjust pricing more frequently; understand and optimise consumption.
• Store management optimisation: Automate packaging services, SKU accounting, and inventory monitoring to reduce shrinkage, navigate the inventory easier, and generally improve store efficiency.
• Supply chain optimisation: Gain visibility into product movement, conditions, and location through the entire supply chain process to predict precise delivery times. Test different vendors and compare them for efficiency.