IoT value in weeks, not months

If you’ve met me or been at one of my presentations, you know I am passionate about all things digital. Ten years ago, if anyone had told you that your grandmother would use the internet to stay in touch, would you have believed them? Or that Silicon Valley tech giants were going into the self-driving car business? People and products and services are all getting connected at a staggering rate. There is no question in my mind that soon, very soon, all things will be connected.

I live in the real world, where enterprises need to stay focused on value to survive and thrive. I know that the extraordinary connectivity of the Internet of Things (IoT) offers added value to manufacturing, the entire supply chain, marketing and communications, customer relations, and management of practically any enterprise.

The promise of IoT, of making digital representations of every physical thing – digital “twins”– then connecting everything, collecting and analyzing all the data will ultimately result in increased value in many ways, including:

• Discovering potential machine failures before they actually happen
• Keeping an eye on assets as they move around the factory or globe
• Using insights from customer demand and manufacturing processes to meet delivery promise dates
• Scaling those benefits across all of your enterprise

The challenge of IoT is adding sensors and edge-computing to existing assets and then collecting, analyzing, and implementing changes in a timely, cost-effective manner. It’s the challenge of thinking big then starting small, and having the means to scale fast. And it’s the challenge of having expertise in the variety of technologies IoT utilizes to achieve meaningful results, and the know-how to get those various technologies to work together in a secure way.

What if the best version of your business was weeks – not months – away?

I’m really excited to introduce a turnkey IoT solution for manufacturing– it's like putting all you need for IoT into one box – at the LiveWorx Technology Conference this month. This solution is one of the industry’s first converged systems for IoT that accelerates time-to-insight because it’s at the edge of your manufacturing floor. It combines best-of-breed analytics, software, hardware, security, and professional services in a single pre-configured solution.

Turnkey IoT is a collaborative effort created by Deloitte and a few of our alliances, including PTC. It takes the complexity out of finding the right sensor, purchasing scalable hardware, configuring software, and using pre-configured analytics. It’s pre-tested and pre-integrated to lower risk and expedites the path to value from months to weeks. And unlike other products, this solution works at the source. It computes, analyzes, and acts where the machinery actually is. Its ability to quickly process data decreases time-to-insight and time-to-action.

Here’s how an enterprise might use the turnkey IoT solution to enhance traditional maintenance in an industrial environment and rapidly unlock value:

1. Begin with monitoring assets and health of your equipment. Position turnkey IoT on your manufacturing floor and monitor the real-time data from individual assets displayed on your dashboard.
2. As turnkey IoT establishes parameters and generates intelligent alerts, your maintenance can shift from MTBF (mean time between failures) calculations to actual condition-based calculations.
3. As you tweak parameters and define optimal performance ranges, you can implement performance-based maintenance.
4. Analyze the data and create models, and you have effective prediction-based maintenance.

The turnkey IoT solution can increase overall equipment effectiveness by five to 20 percent, while lowering production and maintenance costs. And it can start delivering these real business benefits in a matter of weeks, not months.

With turnkey IoT, you can drive tangible results across your operation. Because you are collecting and analyzing data right at the source, and data collection begins the day you install the device, the solution quickly starts generating business results from analyzed data.  And it easily scales up, from a small pilot program to an entire production line to your manufacturing operation, and ultimately to your global supply network. Supporting maintenance activities is only the tip of the iceberg. Looking forward, turnkey IoT will grow to support other use cases and industries such as asset visibility, medical equipment monitoring, and even retail, to name a few.

One more step toward the all-connected future, turnkey IoT is an easy-to-install, all-in-one solution.  What are you waiting for?

Deloitte Digital’s IoT team will be at LiveWorx 2017 technology conference hosted by PTC, May 22 to 25 in Boston. Head over to the LiveWorx 2017 website for details on the conference.

With its differentiated “Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast” methodology and its exceptional ecosystem of alliances, Deloitte can help organizations jumpstart their IoT journey. To learn more, contact Deloitte’s Chief IoT Technologist, Robert Schmid at roschmid@deloitte.com or watch Robert’s weekly online video program “Coffee with Mr. IoT,” featuring chats with leaders in the IoT space.

Robert Schmid, aka “Mr. IoT,” is Deloitte’s Chief IoT Technologist.