IoT platforms for medium-sized companies
Turn data into insights.
The innovative Internet of Things (IoT), is a platform that connects all your devices operating in the enterprise. By connecting all the devices and machines that make up and power your business, you can make business processes more efficient by making decisions proactively.
For mid-sized companies in particular, the IoT helps them run a more productive business process. Often, companies in the mid-market manufacturing industry struggle with challenges related to too-long processes within the company, the lack of linkage between production data and customer data, and too little visibility regarding supply chains.
It is time to leverage these technologies in the enterprise to connect machines and equipment, complement them with digital services and overcome the challenges. The IoT is thus the solution for networking data and systems as well as optimizing business processes. Entire machine shops can thus be centrally monitored, controlled and managed remotely. Production is closely interlinked with state-of-the-art information and communication technology.
The digital success of SMEs requires intelligent, sensor-based and interconnected production systems for the implementation and operation of the corresponding network infrastructures and processing technology that not only generates data in real time, but also analyzes data relevant to the company and processes it further in the right place. The basis for this are intelligent, sensor-supported and interconnected production systems. Here, most processes run automatically. Intelligent monitoring of production data enables companies to respond to changing conditions almost in real time and to control and optimize their production accordingly.
The keyword is Industry 4.0.
Companies in the medium-sized manufacturing industry are particularly affected and are under a certain pressure not to be left behind. Smart sensor technology as well as edge technology are ready and enable the collection and evaluation of data today - on an unprecedented scale. Industry 4.0 also links production and logistics processes with suppliers thanks to digitalization. In addition, it is possible to identify the need for maintenance on machines at an early stage and proactively prevent a costly breakdown.
The advantages resulting from its use are that companies can use it to reduce costly downtimes of machines, you can extend the running times of the plants and reduce the costs for service and maintenance, as they avoid unnecessary maintenance processes.
Advantages of an IoT platform
From the device to the cloud, IoT offers the most comprehensive and in-depth functionality, already helping a wide range of manufacturing customers improve the performance and productivity of industrial processes. So you can rely on IoT to develop applications to address key challenges so that new value can be created through predictive quality and maintenance analytics, asset condition monitoring, and process optimization.
1.SCALABILITY:
Only minor investment at the beginning. New equipment can be easily added as needed. Increased throughput as needed to operate with low latency. Reliable scaling to billions of devices and messages.
2.TRANSPARENCY:
Because IoT platforms support many standards, format, and interfaces, they connect disparate systems, business applications such as CRM or ERP, mobile apps, and data sources. This means you have everything in view and can determine where and at what stage production is at any given time.
3.EASY DEPLOYMENT AND MANAGEMENT:
Support centralized management, control and monitoring of IoT devices, apps and data remotely. Get started quickly without complex back-end infrastructure. Support for MQTT, HTTP 1.1, and WebSockets, as well as proprietary or legacy protocols. Fast transition from conception to production.
4.ANALYTICS:
Platforms provide numerous capabilities for analyzing data in real time including AI and machine learning to examine information in real time for patterns, variances, dependencies, etc., predict events, or optimize processes.
5.REPORTING:
A typical feature is extensive reporting capabilities with visualization of results in clear dashboards. This means that you always have all events available in real time.
6.DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATION OF IoT APPLICATIONS:
Companies can develop, administer and modify their own IoT applications on the platform, as well as integrate them into their existing IT environments.
7.SECURITY:
Features such as encryption of data and data transfer, identity management or access control protect devices, applications and data from possible attacks and unauthorized access. Use of mutual authentication to ensure that IoT and your devices can identify each other. Encrypting all data using TLS1.2 (available in different programming languages and for different operating systems).
Conclusion
The Internet of Things is transforming businesses in unprecedented ways. It optimizes and improves current and new business processes, provides differentiated levels of customer service, and helps create new revenue streams. It gives manufacturing companies the right information at the right time. Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) offer a secure and easy-to-manage platform for IoT deployments so you can take advantage of cloud and edge computing. You can optimize your production, better utilize your machines, and use predictive maintenance to prevent problems and improve your service. As a company, you can install and operate IoT platforms yourself or obtain them as software as a service (SaaS) from the public cloud.