How IIoT Could Change The Rules Of The OEM Industry

"I never think about the future, it comes soon enough" - Albert Einstein

I believe that the future of industrial equipment building is here, and it's time we thought about it. No doubt about it, selling equipment and only interacting with your customers when it needs to be fixed will cease to be a viable strategy in the era of Industrial IoT. I'm certain that, by now, you are quite aware of an imminent technological transformation in the field but you have been putting off having that conversation for a while. So, in this essay I'm going to explore the topic and discuss major areas that will cause a change of rules in the OEM game.

Equipment Building Business Model

Simply stated, companies that are going to succeed in the future of equipment building are the ones that will be able provide the most valuable information that customers rely on to run their businesses on a day-to-day basis. It matters not that most customers are currently struggling to get a handle on IIoT value proposition, it will however prove detrimental to your business if you fail to act soon rather than later. Simply stated, OEM companies will be expected to provide Intelligent Machines capable of producing data for use in services that combine information, transactional and professional services.

Best of all, Industrial IoT is an incremental technology, which means that it allows OEM manufacturers to benefit from the technology by retrofiting old technology with sensors. This can also prove to be a disadvantage when OEMs decide to drag their feet, because any service provider can hybridise another company's machines by capturing the data it creates. But here is the kicker, there is a new breed of integrators crossing over from the commercial sector. The ones that specialise in smart devices. They are willing and ready to move into manufacturing and industry in general. However, OEM companies are well positioned to fill the gap now more than ever.

As it turns out, the predominant models will be to sell the product using an as-a-service approach. Offering pay per use, customisation, optimisation e.t.c This incentivises the OEM distibutors to manage and deliver maintenance that assures the services offering agreed upon. Hence, transforming the customer relationship from a "fire and forget" approach into a results oriented continuous service offering. 

Predictive Analytics

On the other hand, Predictive Maintenace is perhaps the lowest hanging fruit as far as application of IIoT technologies in OEM industry is concerned. The possibility of automating the analysis of data from equipment sensors to detect anomalies and predict equipment failure is very compelling.

As I have experienced, in production systems , there tends to be an accountability disconnect between raw material input and the finished product. Simply put, there is no way of knowing whether a piece of equipment is performing as it should. Leading to untracable production losses. It is therefore a no-brainer that going foward, customers are going to demand more transparency from OEM companies. And those that make their machines Industrial IoT compatible are going to fare better as it will enable manufacturing companies to get a snapshot of current production efficiency for a machine in question.

But that is just part of the story. As Industrial IoT continues to present an opportunity to reduce downtime and increase machine utilisation, Predictive maintenance elements such as Equipment Lifetime and Uptime prediction, Defects Detection and Optimal Maintenance Scheduling will become industry standard. And it doesn't stop there, the real game changer is the application of advanced machine learning to enable OEM companies to model their products in software to simulate different scenarios in order to find ways to maximise efficiency for any given situation. Providing them with priceless insight into the design, usability and servicability of a product before resources are commited to its production.

Device Management and Remote Maintenance

So here's the thing, Industrial IoT for OEMs is not just about getting intelligence packed into equipment. Once your product is out there, you have to manage it, update it and configure it e.t.c. I would therefore like to believe that IIoT will necessitate a fundamental change to how OEMs build equipment. The infrastructure of the machine itself will become software defined as opposed to hardware. This is so that it allows machine functionality to become virtualised in software and essentially decoupling machine software from hardware and allowing OEM companies to remotely monitor, manage and upgrade software. 

The availabililty of multicore processor technology, embedded virtualisation will allow OEMs to build machines that can be operated in ways not possible before. The cloud based technologies will be instrumental in enabling rich management and maintenance of equipment on the ground as cloud-edge synchronisation mechanisms make it super easy to coordinate changes such such as firmware download e.t.c 

Conclusion

Industrial IoT will be critical to delivering di?erentiated new product-service hybrids that stand out from the rest. And in order for OEMs to reap the full benefits of the IIoT they will need to exploit key IIoT technologies such as sensor-driven computing, industrial analytics and intelligent machine applications. 

How do you see IIoT impacting the OEM Industry? Feel free to share in the comments section below!