IoT continues to be widely talked about, as new features and possibilities are implemented and described in success stories. In 2022 global spending on IoT had surpassed USD 1 trillion which looks impressive without being a final word or even close to it. 

That being said, there is a top 5 for everything nowadays, so let’s take a look:

The industries which used IoT the most were healthcare, transportation, energy, manufacturing, and construction. Healthcare looks particularly interesting, because of the remote monitoring system, which allows patients to be treated from home and avoid unnecessary hospitalization. That being said, manufacturing processes are the ones commercially to look at, because they seem to be profitable for a vast majority of production plants. Thanks to the industrial Internet of Things, real-time data can be collected and analyzed to make processes more efficient and cheaper. 

The top 5 countries in 2022 when it comes to investing in IoT were US, China, Japan, South Korea, and Germany. The processes that were most commonly benefiting from IoT were tracking, predictive maintenance, condition monitoring, quality control, and supply chain management. Those things make a lot of sense because sensors can be introduced to different stages of those processes which is going to cut costs. 

Because of the almost limitless possibilities of this technology, IoT devices are expected to cross 15 billion this year, which is a 55% increase from 2020.

When it comes to specific processes IoT proved itself to be particularly effective if used to track the location of assets. The point is to avoid as much of losses as possible, once again – for cost-cutting reasons. That means, that you as a business owner can track your vehicles, products, raw materials… basically whatever has to be right on time to save you some money on warehousing for instance. 

The same goes for predictive maintenance, where IoT equipment is capable of monitoring the condition of your assets and can inform you when maintenance might be necessary.

While companies around the world have experimented with how IoT can benefit them in areas like quality control or supply chain management, the biggest reason why the interest could grow even faster was the chip shortage – a purely technical problem, that had nothing to do with mistrust or case studies proving that IoT solutions are less than great. The chip shortage is responsible for derailing production and therefore slowing down the process of IoT’s rise to fame.

Nevertheless, while IoT solutions should be considered in any business, there has to be a lot of thought put into how to navigate it and what to do in order to optimize results. It’s best to discuss your business vision with IoT professionals to see how high your company can fly with new technology.

Author: Andrzej Wodnicki, Managing Director at ITSG Global