What honey is to a bee, IoT is to digital transformation. The 21st century has witnessed IoT developments attaining great accomplishments. Here, the industrial internet of things contributes the maximum share of successes. Manufacturers and industrialists belonging to different sectors tend to miss out on lucrative opportunities because the manufacturing processes are extremely complex. The processes tend to confuse businesses and cause irreversible losses. To manifest a favorable reality, manufacturers and industrialists adopt IoT-driven solutions. This is an extremely important step to make smart factories a possibility.

This is the era of Industry 4.0 and digital transformation of manufacturing. The manufacturing industry is gaining the most IoT-driven projects. This is because of the strong demand for customization, heightened customer expectations and complexity of the global supply chain. The competitive market and different forms of challenges push manufacturers across the globe to try their hands on innovative strategies. With the intention to broaden the scope of productivity and simplify manufacturing, manufacturers are trying their hand at digital transformation with IoT solutions as the one stop solution.

In 2017, 60% of the global manufacturers would use data analytics to give an edge to their business operations, according to IDC and SAP. This data will be tracked by connected devices to analyze complicated manufacturing processes and identify the optimization possibilities. IoT technology gives manufacturers many advantages.



Predictive capabilities improve forecasting
It is not easy for a manager to keep an eye on each and every machine meant or expected to contribute to the production process. Tracing the predictive capabilities of each and every machine is crucial for better production at lower costs. Creating a network driven by IoT is crucial in identifying the actual machine performance. It assists businesses in tracing the machine faults in real time. Once a faulty machine gets detected, the manufacturers can immediately send it for repairs or can disown it.




Data provides insights into energy use
Energy is one of the largest expenses of a manufacturing firm. The bills always arrive half a month prior to the end of the billing cycle and highlight the total units of energy consumed. It is obvious that uneven energy consumption causes unnecessary expenses to manufacturing units. The catch here is that the bill just shows the total amount that is to be paid. With IoT tools, the firm paying can see a proper breakdown of the bill. This way, specific inefficiency gets highlighted. Collecting data right from the device level traces different equipment that is underperforming. Next, that machinery could simply be put in the process that will highlight its efficiency. Every piece of machinery present on a floor could be tracked. Managers can gain granular visibility into energy consumption, actionable insights about energy waste and regulatory compliance issues.

It is truly interesting how real-time data can provide insights about off-hour energy consumption, energy saving opportunities and ideas to optimize production schedules. In order to understand machine health, real-time data can benchmark similar pieces of equipment. Real-time data can also proactively solve issues with underperforming machines. It becomes comfortable for managers to evaluate different locations and zoom into hidden operational inefficiencies in short time spans.



IoT upgrades quality analysis and product quality
A manufacturer is always on the lookout for improving the quality of a given product. A product that offers superior quality promises waste reduction, increases customer satisfaction, lowers costs and boosts sales. Achieving this goal is not always easy, but IoT simplifies it through faulty equipment detection due to issues such as improper maintenance or wrong machine model set up that cause obstacles in the production processes.

IoT helps reduce downtime
Profits are the backbone of every organization. The manufacturing units produce quality products to sustain customer loyalty. But quality production is not enough to keep a manufacturing firm above the market competition. Timely, accurate and high-quality production is the core reason behind profit earning. In all these, not having reliable machinery is a glaring risk. If a machine breaks down during the run, it changes the entire production planning of the current batch that is on the go. It also calls in additional downtime expenses. IoT predicts the longevity of machinery limit these costs and downtime in order to spare the manufacturers from such nightmares.

IoT builds smart factories
Accurate information about products, production plants, networks and systems are in demand. All these are provided by IoT. Its real-time capabilities enable manufacturers and industrialists to take the best course of action to achieve business goals without wasting time or money and to sail through glaring complexities. IoT highlights the hindrances that stop manufacturing processes and helps manufacturers make crucial performance-based decisions. These decisions strengthen the business performance.

The manufacturing industry strives day in and day out to meet the customer’s expectations or specifications better while operating with higher profitability. IoT aims at minimizing human interference while boosting machine intelligence, thus delivering competitive advantage that turns a regular manufacturing unit into a smart factory.

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source : https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/blog/IoT-Agenda/IoT-simplifies-manufacturing-processes