Whether you accept it or not, manufacturers are rapidly adopting IoT for their digital transformation journey. Big Data, Cloud Computing, Industrial IoT, are part of day to day discussion. Plus Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are turning down the heat. But, what matters the most is what’s happening on the ground. How projects are moving forward, which use cases are more promising than others in delivering RoI. In this issue, we present you three such articles which go deeper into these aspects.

Making sure your IIoT Pilot doesn’t rest in peace

In this industry, the vast majority of IoT pilots don’t convert into longterm projects. It’s not that IoT technology fails to deliver value, but lack of clarity, half-hearted, and immature execution leads to such a disaster and they rest in peace. Enno de Boer, McKinsey & Co. expert partner discusses the ways to get manufacturers’ IoT projects out of limbo and onto the factory floor. More than four in 10 companies are stuck in the endless churn of an idea that has a long and sometimes unfulfilled journey. Three out of 10 have yet to start. Eighty-four percent of companies were stuck in pilot mode for more than a year and 28% for more than two years.

This is absolute must read if you have undertaken an IoT pilot or deciding to go for it.

Top 10 IIoT Use Cases 

As per the Gartner study in 2017, more than half of the systems and process will have some element of IoT by 2020. This indicates that IoT is becoming part of manufacturing fabric. But it’s interesting to see which problems IoT will solve promisingly and what will make more and more manufacturers adopt to IoT in years to come. Kevin Gold in this article presents findings of his study. Last week, I explored the top four and bottom four use cases for the IoT across industries. I thought it was interesting to compare those findings with ones previously produced by BCG.

According to BCG, business leaders are asking how IoT can help their companies increase customer satisfaction, improve quality, support new business models (such as data-driven services), and reduce costs. What they found back in 2017 as the top ten most valuable use cases, It’s small but worth a read.

Self-Healing Machinery is not a dream anymore

One of the biggest benefits of IoT is to crunch a large amount of historical data about machine behavior and predict next failure or behavior pattern. Already manufacturers have started seeing benefits of predictive maintenance and predictive quality. With the advancement in sensor technology, edge computing, and machine learning, a day is not far when machines will start self-troubleshooting and take corrective actions.

The idea that the team proposes is to not just detect weaknesses during production but to also fix the potential issues automatically through a kind of mathematically calculated self-healing. The scientists say diagnostics should supply recommendations before a piece of equipment has failed. That self-healing aspect would take equipment monitoring to the next level. Patrick Nelson of Network World discusses how The Industrial IoT will give us self-healing machinery.

We hope that you enjoy reading these articles as much as we do while curating them for you. Let us know what you think about the future of IIoT.