By Antonio Carlos de Brito *
IoT - the internet of things - is one of the pillars of Digital Transformation. From an acronym unknown 4 or 5 years ago, it has become one of the hopes of achieving benefits by monitoring equipment from a distance, by automating inspection and maintenance flows and even by enabling communication and collaboration between equipment. The 20 billion “things” connected by the internet are expected to move more than US$ 1 trillion in 2022, according to forecasts by Gartner and IDC.
According to MPI (MPI's Internet of Things Report: Challenges), 66% of the companies that adopted an IoT strategy increased their productivity by more than 5%; and 57% increased their profitability by more than 5%.
Just as we saw the performance of Formula 1 cars jump through the analysis of telemetry data - variables such as fluid and brake temperature, engine vibration, linear and centripetal acceleration and many other indicators read from a distance and transmitted to computers. engineers in the boxes of the teams - we are in the age of reading and analyzing data and then working on industrial equipment and people at a distance. People? Yes. Clocks that monitor people's pressure, heart rate, temperature and acceleration reveal potentially dangerous situations that can trigger alarms at a central station to see if someone has fallen or is about to have a heart attack.
And the field is also not left out. The sensors that monitor the movements, temperature and acidity of the stomachs of cows (“A Vaca Conectada”) tell a beautiful story about the implantation of IoT in agriculture.
The most cited IoT use cases include:
1. Asset and material traceability: ensure logistical optimization through easy location and monitoring of critical assets (“where are my shipments”, “what was the path that the truck took inside the iron mine”)
2. Industrial automation: ability to achieve unified communication within an industry (that is, a set of companies in the same industrial sector) leveraging the use of RFID and bar codes
3. Operations intelligence: achieve superior operational performance and increase decision-making capabilities by exploring combination, analysis and delivery of insights from multiple information silos
4. Key unified performance indicators: gain real-time visibility into the operational and comparative performance of equipment (“microparameter panel and global production capacity monitoring”)
5. Real-time asset health monitoring: minimize equipment downtime and critical assets through continuous monitoring of operating conditions (the machines are saying - "adjust or fix me before I break")
6. Improved operations management: explore connectivity, interoperability, mobility and “crowd sourced” intelligence to support Industry 4.0 initiatives, or, in layman's terms, “conversation between machines” - “let's go, we machines, synchronize production speeds in this chain to reduce inventories intermediaries ”
Along with the value that IoT brings to companies as they adopt specific strategies for their implementation and advance in the maturity of their facilities, companies face challenges, such as adapting existing technologies, adapting the network to allow data traffic from sensors, have talents and skills to deal with IoT and so on. But what is most striking about this MPI research is that there is a lack of ideas on how to implement IoT in your business and what are the appropriate use cases to justify the benefits of its implementation. Identifying IoT opportunities and benefits was cited first with 46% responses among respondents working in manufacturing companies, for IoT implementation processes and with 42%, when asked about product-related challenges.
Another important aspect is to see why so many efforts to implement an IoT program have failed:
• Failure to establish measurable goals BEFORE implementation: 5% of the companies do not reach the objectives and 6% do not establish objectives a priori
• Failure to manage deadlines of implementation: 55% of projects are delayed
• Failure to manage the budget of IoT implementation projects: 55% of projects spend more than the budget allocated for the project
After all, what is IoT for?
Designing a strategy for IoT consists of the primary activity of the project, as well as for any transformational or impacting initiative in your company. Establishing clear and measurable objectives, for the implementation phase - such as scope, deadlines and budget - and for the operational phase - such as accuracy and availability of data, time for decision-making and its impact - transform an initiative into a corporate program with evident and justifiable results, generating funds for other attractive projects like these.
The internet of things should enable the company to better serve its customers, suppliers, employees and create operational benefits that range from asset visibility to new sources of revenue and customer segments. Among the easiest cases to justify, such as the improvement in the asset management processes, the increase in the useful life of the equipment, the productivity of the maintenance force and the increase in the productive capacity, it may be the project that your company lacks to start the implementation of an IoT strategy together with the modernization of its maintenance management platform. Or it can be an innovation embedded in their machines that are sold to other customers or a set of sensors that monitors vehicle vibration to derive the way to drive them and the risk that drivers present for the purpose of contracting insurance.
IoT opens up new business avenues. The challenges are great, but manageable.
* Antonio Carlos de Brito, Sr. Principal, Digital & Value Engineering, Infor LATAM
Warning: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
EN 
PT 
