By Iain Davidson, Senior Product Manager, Wireless Logic
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is not just transforming manufacturing, supply chain management and industrial processes – it’s rewriting the rules of efficiency and competitiveness.
Factories that once relied on isolated, manual processes are now joined up and smart through connected machinery, real-time analytics and AR/VR solutions to optimise operations. These technologies are raising the bar on productivity, with a positive impact on revenue, customer satisfaction and overall business reputation.
But with this transformation comes dependency. Industry cannot afford to be without its IoT applications, as they are embedded into the very fabric of operations. Uptime is now the deciding factor between industry leaders and those left behind.
How IIoT is disrupting industry through smarter, faster operations
From robotics and automation to asset tracking and monitoring, IIoT is disrupting factories, warehouses and supply chains. The numbers speak to the scale of this change with the global IIoT market estimated to grow to over $391 billion by 2028.
Applications driving this growth include machine and plant monitoring in support of predictive maintenance, robotics for rapid and consistent assembly lines, video and LIDAR (light detection and ranging), warehouse inventory robots and environmental sensors that enable optimised conditions. Data from these IIoT applications and devices gives organisations unprecedented visibility into their industrial operations. This insight supports optimisation and efficiency initiatives, product innovation, quality improvements and a reduction in production downtime.
The impact is undeniable. Stanley Black & Decker’s smart factory in Mexico increased the production of certain power tools by 24%. Airbus improved assembly line efficiency by 20-30% and Procter & Gamble reduced throughput time by 24 hours using product monitoring sensors. These aren’t isolated wins – they’re setting a new standard.
Beyond productivity, IIoT is a shield against operational risks. Expensive, mission-critical assets are vulnerable to theft and damage, but IIoT-powered security systems enable continuous tracking, monitoring and protection.
The cost of IIoT downtime
While IIoT is driving impressive productivity gains, downtime remains an increasingly expensive liability. According to Siemens, every hour of unplanned downtime costs automotive manufacturers $2.3 million. Small and medium sized manufacturers suffer too, with an estimated $150,000 per unproductive hour at the top end.
At these stakes, uptime is a non-negotiable necessity. Organisations need to do everything they can to keep things running and have robust business continuity plans in place to reduce the impact of any unforeseen event to as little as possible.
As companies embed IIoT in their operations, they must afford the highest due diligence to ensuring resilience is built into their processes and IIoT device, network and cloud services. Given this, it’s unsurprising that businesses want performance and reliability most from their IoT connectivity partners. Nearly a quarter (23%) ranked this their number one factor in Wireless Logic/Kaleido Intelligence’s research, a far higher percentage than for any other single factor.
What are the risks of an IIoT outage?
Uptime depends on uncompromising reliability across every link in the IIoT value chain and organisations must understand the full extent of where the risks are. IIoT solutions are made up of devices, networks, software, applications, operational processes and invariably, Cloud environments. If any part fails, the entire system is at risk.
That can make protecting IIoT solutions a seemingly daunting task. Mitigating these risks requires an all-in approach – resilience and automation must be built into IIoT solutions, ensuring rapid recovery and minimal disruption when issues arise.
Best practice for maximising IIoT uptime
To stay ahead, industrial companies need to demand high-availability solutions from their IIoT providers.
- Infrastructure resilience – to include built in redundancy for networks and systems to prevent single points of failure, load balancing and auto-scaling to handle demand fluctuations and georedundancy and automated failover to keep service going during an outage
- Security – this must be built-in to every aspect of an IIoT solution and includes a whole range of measures such as identity and access management, multi-factor authentication, encrypted data, endpoint protection, and patch management
- Service performance optimisation – several measures can help optimise performance including content delivery networks and Edge computing, rate-limiting and regular capacity planning
- Monitoring and predictive maintenance – real-time monitoring of infrastructure, applications and devices is possible, as are AI-driven predictive analytics to anticipate failures
- Automation and orchestration – for automated provisioning, software updates, and self-healing systems
- Disaster recovery (DR) – a DR plan should include frequent backups and procedures should be tested regularly
- Change management and governance – version control of configurations should be maintained and systems audited against regulatory standards; use formal change control procedures
- Customer communication and support – status pages and regulator communication can keep customers informed during any incidents; automated alerts and customer self-service tools also help
- Sustainability – energy use in data centres can be optimised through virtualisation, containerisation and power-efficient hardware, and consumption monitored to understand progress towards sustainability goals
IIoT is the future – so it must be built to last
As IIoT solutions become integrated into more operations and processes, the consequences of failure grow. No longer afterthoughts, security, resilience, and uptime are now the difference between progress and falling behind.
Embedding high-availability, security and automation into every layer of the IIoT infrastructure will future-proof operations, sustain growth and maintain the productivity levels customers and stakeholders demand.
The future of IIoT belongs to those who can maximise uptime – no matter what.
This article originally appeared in the April 25 magazine issue of IoT Insider.
