The Fourth Industrial Revolution is ON – Era of IoT!

Apr 19,2019 by Shashvat Vats
Inner banner
3414 Views

Ever thought how it would feel like

  • If you enter your home and the light gets ON by itself?
  • If you wake up in the morning and the coffee machine is already ready without any human intervention?
  • If you are in your office and your watch tells you that only an hour is left for the client meeting?
  • If you are shopping and trying the outfit digitally?

These are not the fantasies but the reality that is slowing shaping up. All thanks to IoT, the Internet of Things.

The concept of IoT is to transform the fashion in which we communicate with the world around us. According to it, every device can be connected to each other, thus reducing the human efforts and increasing efficiency.

From healthcare to retail, from agriculture to mobile apps development, several sectors are now adopting IoT technology. The adoption is slow because of reasons like higher cost, time-consumption, blurred benefits, lack of standardization, less skilled experts, etc.

However, IoT holds a reputation of a technology that has the competency to change the world as we know it. So, the top cats of every sector have already put in millions of dollars in IoT.

IoT founders have always envisioned connecting everyone to everything, making the world much secure and digitally powered.   

It is being estimated that by the year 2020, around 20 billion devices will be connected to each other.

Business veterans and scholars have already announced that with the commencement of IoT, the human civilization has entered into the 4th Industrial revolution – A time when digitization will dominate the business world.

But is it really happening? Stay with us as we unfold the repercussions of IoT technology on the business community, specifically manufacturing.

See also  Does Fusion Of AI And IoT Have The Potential To Bring The Future?

IoT and Manufacturing –The Ripple Effect

You shouldn’t be surprised if I tell you that IoT is much nimble and productive than the smart television you have and the home security you trust on.

IoT encourages multiple devices to connect together and work more efficiently. With the rising number of connected devices and sensors, several industries are eyeing the transiting possibilities that exist.

When talking of manufacturing, what do you think IoT has for this sector?

IoT is a notion to digitize everything. And the main objective of the digitization of everything is to increase efficiency in every possible manner.

So, when it comes to the manufacturing sector, IoT uplifts the efficiency of every level of the supply chain.

Adding up, ultra-modern analytics aid the manufacturing industry by unfolding insights that are utilized to enhance operations, elevate efficiency and drive uninterrupted improvement.

This is why a lot of big corporations have already integrated IoT in their manufacturing units.

The manufacturing plants are digitalized and IoT helps these companies to blend with the production assets to ensure much-efficient monitoring of performance.

Apart from data collection, IoT helps the businesses to use valuable and advanced information to enhance the production to maximum possible efficiency.

Also, IoT refrains malfunctions by offering real-time data on factory machinery and equipment. With the help of this technology, manufacturing plants managers can access the customer and product data without any fuss.

It won’t be early to say that IoT is offering a myriad of amazing possibilities for leading manufacturers in the world.

The automotive sector is especially going to experience tantalizing progress with the inclusion of IoT in its manufacturing division.

IoT benefits – Fixing the bottlenecks

Analytics and efficiency are the two deciding factor for manufacturing success.

See also  The Future of IoT: How will this Technology Shape Our Lives

With IoT, manufacturers expect an accelerated performance and trimmed factory downtime.

If you look closely, handling logistic operations is one of the daunting tasks faced by manufacturers who want to integrate IoT.

And guess what? One of the major benefits of IoT being implemented in the manufacturing sector is that it can transform the logistics for good.

Typically speaking, IoT helps the manufacturing sector in the following ways:

  • It aligns the inventory management by offering a pivotal channel on which all IoT sensors can be bridged and analyzed remotely.
  • IoT also helps the business owners to retrieve characteristic information directly from consumers’ product. This helps the manufacturers to create tactics that can push the performance and safety to an apex level.
  • In order to execute prompt repairs and refrain potential glitches, company owners can also benefit on the uniform stream of data empowered by IoT.

According to a survey, 1 out of 10 companies that have successfully implemented a digital transformation in their manufacturing plants, will experience a 10% soar in their overall revenue.

IoT concerns – the security trouble

Well, IoT does curtail a significant amount of cost by restricting expense and making factory floor operation smoother and agile.

However, there is a raising concern related to the security loopholes in IoT connected devices.

IoT is considered as a notorious intruder for systems that have weaker security.

A report from IBM states that security-related IoT compromises have increased by a staggering 600% in 2018 alone.

To avoid any security breach, manufacturers must make it certain to be very specific about the sort of connection they are choosing to pair the devices.

Generally, two kinds of connections are available to enable interaction with an IoT device:

  1. Peer-to-peer: Data is shared between two peers by using only a single server to develop a direct connection.
  2. Server-based: Client data is first sent via a centralized server before being sent to the sensor itself.
See also  3 Major Disadvantages of IoT You Must Beware Of!

Call a spade a spade, the connection is drained by a third-party server, making security more vulnerable in the process.

However, P2P is deemed as a preferred connection type that refrains intrusion, which is ideal for the manufacturing businesses.

IoT Regulations – The beginning

It becomes quite apparent with all the security issues and billions of dollars invested that IoT had to come under the government’s shadow.

As a result, the government of the United States ordained the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act in 2017, to fix the security standards for IoT devices.

This means that vendors can only sell those IoT devices that fall under this bill. So, IoT service providers were compelled to adjust their devices with new security standards.

This has put breaks on the sale of devices that are vulnerable to security threats.

Albeit the bill only shadows cybersecurity for the government’s IoT devices but still, such regulations can increase the trust of manufacturers on this high-end tech.

Road Ahead

IoT is still a toddler.

There are very few IoT specialists in the world and this is one major reason why IoT implementation has been slow.

Those who design IoT and those who use it, both need to be watchful as this ultra-modern tech is becoming critical to operational efficiencies.

However, when it comes to the manufacturing industry, benefits surpasses the limitations quite comfortably.

After all, escalating high performance while lowering down the operational downtime is what every manufacturing business owner wish is.

This is the reason that IoT is considered as the fourth big revolution experienced by the manufacturing sector.

Stay tuned for more tech-related updates. Thanks!

2
Leave a Reply

avatar
2 Comment threads
0 Thread replies
0 Followers
 
Most reacted comment
Hottest comment thread
  Subscribe  
newest oldest
Notify of
Error Code 1802
Guest
Error Code 1802

This post is very informative with the details about the story and the history of the IOT. We use things but we never try to get to know the history behind it. so here is one of those important things that we must know.

gracie
Guest
gracie

Awesome blog. I enjoyed reading your articles. This is truly a great read for me. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!