The Internet of Things (IoT) market is changing the business world. It’s a market shift comparable in scale and importance to when the initial Internet phenomenon of the 1990s transformed how businesses functioned, sold, and competed.

“Here’s an easy way to think of what’s going on,” writes Maciej Kranz in his book Building the Internet of Things. “The first stage of the Internet connected people to networks, data, each other, and processes. With IoT, we’re now connecting anything to anything — or, if you prefer, everything with everything. The business impact of IoT makes it revolutionary; when everything can communicate with everything else, it essentially redefines and creates new business value chains”1.

Read More IoT Benefits: IoT Continues to Generate Important Benefits for Productive Sectors

IoT Data: the Center of IoT Universe

At the center of the growing IoT universe is data — enormous amounts of data. This IoT data gets tracked, collected, organized, consolidated, stored, analyzed, and manipulated.

Data is the IoT asset that businesses use to generate faster insights for making informed business decisions. Companies leverage IoT data to operate more productively, detect fraud, alleviate wasteful spending, shift investments to generate more revenues, and reduce operational costs.

As a central driver of this market, there are two key questions about IoT and data of paramount importance: how does IoT improve data quality and affect operational reporting?

Generate Accurate Insights with IoT Data

IoT improves data quality because it generates in real time and with greater accuracy and reliability.

Similarly, IoT data improves operational reporting because the data — and insights generated — can be trusted to improve accuracy and timeliness of reporting on business activities.

Equipped with better data, businesses can elevate the performance of supply chains, customer service, and manufacturing.  These organizations can achieve this while improving safety and reducing risks and errors.

Fueled by the IoT, these data quality and operational reporting improvements are being achieved in a wide range of industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, health care, logistics and fleet management.

Improve Operational Efficiency With IoT Data

IoT in Manufacturing

The Internet of Things assists businesses with their operational reporting in the manufacturing arena.

For example, IoT technologies can track electricity consumption of manufacturing machines to ensure the equipment is using an appropriate amount of electricity without wasting energy and accumulating unnecessary costs. IoT technologies can also track the speed of these machines to prevent them from executing too fast, so they don’t malfunction, and not too slow, so productivity remains high.

IoT technologies can also monitor and improve environmental factors, such as air quality, humidity, and temperature in the manufacturing plants. These capabilities are crucial for sustaining high product quality and ensuring safe health conditions for factory workers.

Without these IoT technologies, a manufacturer’s operational reporting would be less complete, accurate, and useful. The company would be unable to generate insights based on data about the IoT devices and whether to take actions to improve manufacturing operations.

IoT Data Tracks Water, Light, and Humidity

IoT in Agriculture

Improvements in operational reporting can also be achieved when IoT technologies are used to track a range of sensing technologies such as soil scanning, water, light, humidity, and temperature management.

IoT sensors embedded within farm soil could alert farmers that the pesticide levels are too high and could damage the vegetable crop. The farmers could in turn lower the pesticide levels so the vegetables are not damaged.

Without this IoT data farmers may not be able to take actions to prevent their crops from spoiling.

The IoT technologies can help report, for example, whether a farm’s sprinkler system is operating on the appropriate schedule and water pressure to ensure proper crop nourishment and growth.

IoT Data Improves Quality of Medical Information

IoT in Healthcare

In the healthcare market, IoT could improve the quality of the data about various medical applications, solutions, and devices. For example, IoT data could provide a more accurate and swift notification about a change in the temperature of a container of blood stored in a hospital refrigerator for a patient needing a blood transfusion.

Without this higher-quality data, it wouldn’t be possible for a nurse or doctor to receive updated information about the temperature shift, in real time. As a result, the blood could be deemed unsuitable for the patient or spoil and be wasted.

IoT’s Fuel: Data 

There are numerous other ways that the IoT bolsters data quality and operational efficiency. And this is possible because of data, which fuels the IoT engine.

“IoT embraces much more than just technology,” writes Maciej Kranz on Building the Internet of Things. “Ultimately, as important as it may seem now, technology will turn out not to be the least of it. Data, meanwhile, will fuel the essential analytics and automation required to efficiently handle the massive volumes of expected activity that must be considered for fast, sound decision-making.”

For more insights about the IoT applications in manufacturing, request a consultation with Identidad Technologies.

References:

1. Building the Internet of Things, Maciej Kranz, 2017
2. https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/iot-applications-in-agriculture-the-potential-of-smart-farming-on-the-current-stage-275066f946d8