The IoT is transforming the business world, but how do we define it? IoT is a universal sensor system connecting the physical world to the Internet. Things, Internet and connectivity are the three main components of the IoT; the value is achieved by closing the distance between the physical world and the digital world in systems that reinforce and improve automatically, reducing costs and increasing agility; it enables an unprecedented level of visibility, improves performance, optimises supply chains, enhances service and creates meaningful insights that benefit business and society alike.
How can we successfully implement IoT technologies? Collaboration among different departments should work together to maximise the benefits offered by IoT technologies and minimise the inherent risks. To start sharing information, insights and know-how, and to keep the pace of a rapidly evolving innovative technology, could be the answer.
The IoT and the automotive manufacturing: Internet connectivity in vehicles allows car companies to release software updates in real time. Affordable sensors and fast and wireless connections have drastically increased the amount and type of data available; this data helps analyse the car's performance, provides more ways for automakers to cross-sell their products and provides more personalised services to its customers; users can reserve smart cars through a mobile app. The IoT allows creative collaboration with close industries, gives meaningful insights optimising your Supply Chain.
The Internet of Thing in Transportation. By their very nature, the logistics providers that move objects by air, sea, rail, and ground have widely distributed networks and rely on rapid information about those networks to make decisions. Companies in this sector have embraced the IoT in diverse settings, from maritime and aviation freight to warehousing to packaging delivery. Specific applications include the real-time trackingof shipments, warehouse-capacity, predictive asset maintenance, routing optimisation, improved last-mile delivery, capacity sensing, planning and reporting, energy-efficiency management, and proactive fault/problem detection and resolution. The value to customers is determined by the time, security, traceability, and condition of their cargo, improves parameters within the T&L service components, add value for both businesses and their customers, and focus on cutting costs or increasing efficiency.
The Maritime IoT Cloud platform provides satellite connectivity on a unified platform and links vessels onto the same network, allowing data sharing within the organisational ecosystem; fosters vessel location and status, temperature of refrigerated cargo containers, connectivity to the Supply Chain, connects stakeholders; safer and cheaper ships through real-time data, analysis of potential dangers and inefficiencies, reducing risks and overall cost, strengthens crew welfare, protects goods in transit and maximises route efficiency, and adds more operational decision making.
Trucking Industry through the IoT tool, to make vehicles that avoid crashes by making roads safer and more efficient; trucks that allows highly assisted/driverless operations, reducing driver fatigue; a proximity control, stop-and-go, emergency brake, and lane-keeping aids; 3-D maps, improvements to road monitoring systems, as a stereo camera and radar sensors, which allow for greater accuracy and improved response times. Producing vehicles equipped with a “Highway Pilot System” to increase road safety, improve fuel efficiency reducing traffic flow, and improving fuel economy.
Agricultural Internet of Thing technology. It is forecasted that by the year 2050, the AIoT will increase food production by 70% and be feeding up to 9.6 billion people. It's promises to transform farming and food production in the future are higher product quality and crop supply, productivity, irrigation, resource conservation, and cost control. The AIoT, integrated with Web Map and Sensor Observation Services provides a solution to managing water requirements, crop water requirements, water supply resources available to reduce waste, as for example, when water is limited by a drought.
The IoT ensures accurate and efficient communication to farmers of real time datarelated to agricultural processes, like planting, harvesting, weather forecasts, soil quality, availability and cost of labour, and better plan their course of activities beforehand to take corrective or preventive measures in advance. With remote visualisation trusted advisers can be involved in decision-making situations; a dealer can remotely diagnose a machine malfunction.
Real Estate Management and the use of the IoT: Real estate, building, and tenant management systems are leading the way on implementing IoT technologies by creating smarter, more efficient buildings, happier tenants and residents, for safer, better connected and more environmentally conscious buildings, by using better communications tools through advanced monitoring and informed decision making. A mobile application allows tenants to place and monitor work; it also serves as an emergency-alert system, direct communication via text messages, emails and automated in the event of a catastrophic event, mitigating security risks.
Transforming the Banking Industry with the IoT new technology makes banking more convenient and secure. How? In contactless payment technology, by implementing photo banking services, such as mobile check deposits, mobile photo bill pay, mobile credit card balance transfer, and person-to-person payments; in ways that meet consumers’ expectations for convenience, security and privacy, improving the consumer experiences.
The Weather Forecasting industry implements the IoT tools on safety and environmental monitoring systems for oil and gas companies in harsh environments, to capture diverse meteorological and oceanographic data in real time, and turn that into information on asset movements and logistics planning, helping energy companies increase efficiency, improve safety, and substantially lower risk; this system allows clients to make informed decisions that are saving lives and money. Multiple networks of sensors continuously measure atmospheric conditions and track the movement of oil platforms, icebergs and vessels, data that is integrated with weather data collected from the nearby ocean or sensors embedded in highways to broadcast live data measurements for pavement temperature and road travel conditions.
The IoT sensors that improve worker safety: The "fatal four" — falls, electrocutions, strikes by objects and being caught in or between objects—were responsible for nearly 60% of construction worker deaths. The IoT technology helps create a safer environment for workers by adopting a wearable sensor-technology that has real-time and long-term planning applications. If a worker wearing sensors enters a “danger zone”, the system can warn the worker to move to a safer location or automatically shut down the machine.
Predictive Maintenance for Heavy Industry. A global leader in power and automation technologies has installed a wide variety of power and automation equipment around the globe. To connect these devices and systems the company relies on several Cloud IoTsolutions, including data aggregation, statistical analysis, and remote control rooms that provide real-time monitoring of individual machines, and longitudinal analyticsthat allow for accurate predictive maintenance and save the company and its clients on maintenance costs by reducing the time and effort required for upkeep, and the costs associated with unexpected downtime by fixing machines before they break.
Transforming Industries with an End-to-End IoT Solution: The IoT technology used by global elevator providers analysis all of the data from the sensors and systems to provide technicians with real-time diagnostic, capabilities and rich data visualisation, to use predictive modelling to prevent errors or delays before they happen. To equip customers with insights at every point of the Supply Chain, saving valuable resources and improving business operations around the globe, are the most innovative IoTsolutions offered. This technology brings together a broad spectrum of software, sensors and devices to predict equipment failures, refines equipment designs and processes, reduces maintenance, and increases productivity.
Virtual Reality: The IoT is all about the insightful use of big data. Some sensors transmit data that can be analysed for trends or used to spot inefficiencies; human or artificially intelligent decision makers can act upon that information to improve operations. Data visualisation is to accurately simulate how products, buildings and other objects perform under different conditions, provides detailed and realistic virtual demonstrations of object-use cases and functionality, and then interact with the design. IoT-connected sensors are used to collect accurate, real-time data on atmospheric conditions, and combine that data with inputs about various materials that could be used in a project to simulate real-world performance under conditions likely to occur at the building site.
Maximising the value generated through IoT applications ultimately means being able to identify and take advantage of new business models within the ecosystem.
Dave Food