Jun 4 2016
Managing Complexities and Challenges of IIoT | Mary McDonald | Industry Week
“[…]When it comes to the manufacturing industry specifically, IoT is poised to make a tectonic shift in the industry. As manufacturing remains one of the larger economic drivers across the globe, one can anticipate that IoT is set to disrupt this important, interconnected global market.”
Sourced through Industry Week
Michel Baudin‘s comments:
In Manufacturing it is, perhaps, fitting that disruption by a largely wireless technology should be heralded with a picture of a 1990s vintage maze of cables. This article is part of an Industry Week special report about the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), with informercials from suppliers like Dell and Intel, and articles about applications in various settings, including the GE case I reviewed earlier this week. I take the authors’ word about what this technology can do. The question in my mind is what Manufacturing will do, given its past unwillingness or inability to take advantage of available technology.
June 7, 2016 @ 10:02 am
The GE article called it a “revolution” and this article calls it a “tectonic shift”. There is no doubt that the prevalence of sensors to make smarter equipment will have an impact on manufacturing. I see this very clearly in my factory. We have installed sensors in some of our equipment that were completely out of reach financially 10 years ago. I guarantee that we will NOT see a step change improvement in manufacturing efficiency as a result of IIoT. Anybody that wants to bet against me on that one can give me a call.
What you should see is a natural evolution. As things become more easily available, they will be adopted as solutions to problems. What you can almost predict based on these articles is strategic objectives that will attempt to create “tectonic shifts” and will likely create earthquakes. I think the analogy is a good one since tectonic shifts rarely have positive outcomes…Just like MRP II, I can foresee executives with no understanding of the actual problems faced with manufacturing sites taking on strategies to embrace IIoT because of articles like these. GE is obviously setting themselves up to replace SAP as the worlds number 1 parasitic software company. Taking capital and returning nothing…