Capitalizing on the promise of IIoT: achieving digital through operational excellence
In this month’s blog, I’d like to delve deeper into a topic I introduced last time: in order to truly become a digital business, enabling the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in manufacturing means factoring in people and services, not just things. Enterprises need to take a new approach, a higher level of thinking if you will, to more freely innovate on processes and discover new sources of revenue without boundaries—including IT.
There used to be a time when manufacturing and operations were linear. That meant only those in services organizations were the ones to follow up with customers to nourish long-term business relationships. Today, we can enjoy the benefits of 1:1 relationships with our customers, big or small, with connection to the entire enterprise value chain. This adds a net new value proposition for digitally-enabled manufacturers by giving them the ability to reengineer products, achieve a step change in excellence, and tap into net new revenue.
The IIoT opportunity
IDC says the market opportunity for manufacturing will by $913B by 2018. And with 14 billion connected devices, IIoT will represent a $10.6 trillion impact. The potential is out there for manufacturers who choose to disrupt, differentiate, or excel.
Manufacturing companies that have digitized their operations are already seeing results—82 percent increased operational efficiency and improved product quality with 49 percent fewer product defects. According to the American Society for Quality, connecting devices and analyzing the data collected enables manufacturers to reduce overhead, conserve resources, increase profits, and optimize operational efficiencies. Companies are already realizing increases of revenue by more than 16 percent in areas of their businesses where they are implementing IIoT technologies.
Turning information into action
In this new digital world, the competition is no longer about the best product, but about the best business model, and you can seize that opportunity by building a continuous flow of information. A fragmented or partial IIoT implementation cannot help you disrupt or innovate.
And it’s not about just connecting devices and products or just applying advanced analytics to what you do today. To unlock new business value, you need to connect equipment, analyze data, and visualize information. But most importantly, you must integrate people and processes to be able to make decisions in a productive way.
How to realize the value of IIoT
So how do you realize the value of IIoT in your own business? And where do you start?
The key to implementing IIoT relies on three aspects of value proposition:
- It must be cost-effective in order to reduce overall business risk. IIoT initiatives used to need millions of dollars and multiple years of investments to see results. Today, Microsoft has reduced the testing and implementation risk dramatically. We have made it quick, easy, and inexpensive to connect your assets and gain insights.
- It must be holistic to flow information from ingestion to value-add. The Industrial Internet of Things, People and Services demands an end-to-end technology platform as a back bone. Microsoft supports IIoT with an array of cloud platforms—including Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online—that all interoperate by design. This enables you to seize business value through our IIoT Connected Operations vision.
- It must be modular and expandable to leverage your existing technology landscape. You can maximize your existing investments and extend them with our comprehensive portfolio of traditional and cloud-based technologies as well as business process and productivity software, devices and services. Think about making it as easy as plug-and- play with software and protocols to connect to all standards—on-premise and cloud—that exist in the market today. Our Microsoft Analytics Platform System and Cortana Analytics Suite give you fully managed big data and advanced analytics tools to help you transform your data into intelligent action. And our Connected Operations and Industrial Services help you identify the type of IoT solution that is right for your business.The opportunity for your business is tremendous!
Work with Microsoft to extend and develop IIoT solutions that will transform your business today. Leverage our knowledge and expertise in a business outcome workshop, deeper solution session, private preview or customer focus group. Or, we can help you develop a proof of concept or pilot to drive the right implementations and solutions.
To get started, you should prioritize. Start with the things in your business that matter the most. For example, you could begin with a remote monitoring project that can help you collect data from assets, and use that data to trigger automatic alerts and actions, such as remote diagnostics, maintenance requests, and other operational processes. We offer a remote monitoring preconfigured solution in the Azure IoT Suite to connect and monitor your devices in order to analyze untapped data and automate business processes.
LinkedIn: Enrique Andaluz
