Rinchi
TechInAfrica – The Internet of Things (IoT) makes things easier and smarter. As in many industrial sectors, it makes processes more efficient. Gartner, a research firm, predicted that by 2020, there will be 20 billion connected things in use all around the world.
According to this prediction, thus, organizations in every sector of the economy must be more skillful in technology as more devices will be connected to the internet. Internet-connected devices are smart devices that know what they’re doing or performing will be a game-changers to manufacturers and services providers who know how to translate the data.
The idea of how IoT will affect our everyday life may sound impractical and idealistic. But many organizations in various industries have taken advantage of it as it’s proven effective and efficient. Therefore, companies need to improve their IT skills to keep up with the trend.
Eckart Zollner, Head of Business Development at Jasco, said: “It’s affecting all sorts of companies and they are having to upskill themselves in the fields of IT, software engineering, data processing, and data management. They are going to have to bring new skills on board to deliver these new technologies.”
An example of how industries have adjusted themselves with the advanced of IoT is in the vehicle manufacturing industry. Thirty years ago, less than 2% of the price of the car went to its electronics while now it’s about 15% of the cost. The numbers go into advanced control instruments, touch screen navigation systems, and the ability to interact with the mobile phone.
“The exciting part is the level of engagement IoT gives us and the opportunity to adjust the way we have been doing things over the last generation. It’s leading to a big shift in how we interact with technology. Computing power, data storage, and transmission are developing so rapidly that businesses can adopt more data-driven processes, management, and control,” said Zollner.
He went on, “In the past, we didn’t have affordable technology to put into thousands of devices to collect data, and we didn’t have the networks to transfer the data or the processers or the storage capacity to handle it.”
IoT helps organizations to be aware and analyze trends or customer demands faster. For example, workers used to physically examine heavy-duty types of machinery in mines or factories themselves. It usually took weeks to identify the result. Now, with IoT, companies can identify the findings much faster.
“Now they are building sensors and intelligence into the machine itself, so it tells you when something needs to be replaced or if the operating conditions are not within spec and it shuts down before any damage occurs. Certain processes no longer need human intervention because you can use artificial intelligence to analyze this accurate, real-time data, and put data-driven decision-making in place so a machine can make the decisions and carry out the interventions,” Zollner explained.
Furthermore, IoT also opens up new opportunities for organizations which want to change how they operate or the markets it targets. However, to keep up with the technology, organizations need to skill-up their IT and data analysts so that they can be benefited from the internet-connected devices. The best solution to keep up with IoT is to collaborate with an IT partner to collect and process data and hire specialized data scientists to examine the findings and device certain actions.
