Digital transformation and automation have opened the doors of innovations for the manufacturing sector. One of such innovative concepts is IoT in manufacturing industry. It has accelerated the pace of Industry 4.0 across the world while enabling manufacturers to overcome major challenges. These challenges include- employee safety, time to market, and hidden costs. Let’s understand the importance of IoT in the manufacturing sector with its benefits.
IoT in Manufacturing- Impact in Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 concept is brought to accelerate productivity, customer experience, and ROI. Talking about the manufacturing industry, the Industry 4.0 solutions can enable manufacturers to overcome inefficiencies in processes and performance issues with the help of IoT, AI, and ML. A recent survey has revealed that manufacturing companies that focus on IoT can save up to 40 to 50% cost associated with safety, operations, and performance.
As the most prevalent Industry 4.0 solution in modern manufacturing companies, IoT can transform operations efficiently in this pandemic age. A study has also revealed that IoT implementations will increase in the post-COVID-19 age also as more manufacturers will tend to jump on the IoT bandwagon. As per an IDC report, worldwide spending on the IoT has reached $745 billion, led by four core sectors- Manufacturing, Consumer, Transportation, and Utilities.
Mostly, IoT-powered solutions aim at ensuring employee safety while implementing remote operations, increase productivity, and meet ever changing demands of tech-savvy customers. After looking at the impact of IoT in manufacturing and Industry 4.0 concept, we will dig deep into the major benefits of IoT.
IoT in Manufacturing- Key Benefits to Consider
The Internet of Things or IoT has many benefits to offer in the manufacturing sector. Let’s make a list of some of its major benefits.
1. Asset Monitoring
IoT can enable employers to track, monitor, and control assets even from remote locations. IoT is useful for human and material tracking in manufacturing and other industries. Real-time asset tracking can eliminate the chances of human errors. What’s more, it makes it possible to utilize assets fully while simplifying audits. IoT in manufacturing can improve the accuracy and transparency of assets. It works well with other technologies including RFID, NFC, and Barcode. It can save time and cost for the manufacturing company. Your staff can easily track the assets in real-time using the IoT technology.
2. Inventory Management
This is another important use case of IoT in manufacturing. It is a daunting task to identify products from large warehouses. It also consumes a lot of time. Thanks to IoT-powered inventory management solutions, this task gets simplified. IoT devices can also be integrated with mobile apps to help employees track material flow and various scenarios like out-of-stock or overstock in real-time. IoT enables contactless asset tracking with the utmost accuracy. It gives real-time data for making informed decisions promptly. You can easily track inventory based on color, size, location, and size.
3. Employee Safety
IoT is not only useful in tracking machines or assets but also enables the company management to fetch the staff’s data from a remote location. The workforce can also capture real-time machine data on the move by integrating IoT in the mobile apps. Remote maintenance and repair are possible with AR and IoT-driven solutions in the remote plants. Simply put, IoT can increase the life-cycle of equipment and reduce the chances of errors or downtime. With this, IoT-driven solutions can make employees secure from any potential hazards due to equipment damage or outage.
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4. Maintaining Quality
For any industry sector, quality of products should remain high, and the manufacturing sector is also no exception! Maintaining quality is essential for industries to maintain high revenue and branding. High-quality products can assist companies attract new customers and retain existing ones for a long time. IoT plays a vital role in identifying the defective raw material or finished goods. Manufacturers can easily find the process flaws thanks to the IoT network and as a result, the product quality can be improved over the period. What’s more, faster TTM (Time-to-Market), streamlined production, and better customer experience are other benefits of IoT for production quality.
5. Predictive Maintenance
Unwanted downtime or outages can cost a lot to any company. It can bring random machine maintenance cycles and unwelcomed outages. IoT-enabled systems for predictive maintenance can help manufacturers to get real-time data that can indicate the failure or damage of machines thereby delaying the maintenance cycle. It reflects the reduction of repair costs. IoT sensors are used to monitor the critical physical parameters like vibration, temperature, and pressure. Apart from reducing the repair and maintenance costs, predictive maintenance can minimize the possibility of machine failures and downtime. Improved maintenance cycles and increased life cycles are other benefits of predictive maintenance.
Concluding Lines
Top manufacturing companies have already started to adopt IoT for leveraging these benefits. IoT-driven solutions can provide real-time insights on the machine’s condition, performance, and maintenance. These factors contribute to improving productivity and the machine’s lifecycle while reducing the machine maintenance costs.
