Manufacturing Industry Speeds Toward IIoT
Whether you call it the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or Industry 4.0, the next big push by software suppliers and integrators is on its way. IIoT is a promising network infrastructure that will help you better control events and activities you should already be managing. It also will help you explore your business to discover events, relationships and issues that can lead to better decisions. However, IIoT can be a risky endeavor if you lack knowledge of the processes and technologies you hope to improve. It is not an easy undertaking. It can be a significant and costly architectural investment that can either support better decisions or lead to frustration and poor decision-making.
To understand the project risks, it is best to look at enterprise resource planning (ERP). Manufacturing’s experience implementing ERP, a 25-year-old technology, isn’t exactly stellar, between 55 and 75 percent of ERP projects come in over budget, are significantly late, or fail to meet company expectations and requirements.
Some problems you should expect to encounter include:
- Increases in flexibility and agility are directly related to increases in complexity
- Software as a Service and the cloud are just platforms, not processes or innovations
- Data integrity must be defined as a critical priority of any technology project.
- Your IT organization may not be ready for new digital transformations. Newer ERP applications like Epicor ERP 10.2 are returning to discrete business and manufacturing applications, but with tightly defined interfaces
- Integration is hard, in the IIoT domain, there are no universal standards for integration
- Plants are noisy environments, signal noise interferes with wireless communication from monitors and RFID tags
There is no reason your organization needs to tackle this complex task by itself. 2W Tech is a full-service IT Consulting Firm that specializes in the manufacturing space, so we can tailor solutions to your needs. Contact us today for help with your IT demands.