IoT, the Internet of Things. It’s all over trade media and conversations, as well as all around us in stores and in our homes. I’m still dipping into the realities of implementing IoT myself, learning what tools to learn, and how I and Zero Wait-State can bring valuable solutions to our partners and clients through the convergence of IoT and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Though I still have a lot to learn, I thought I’d share my initial thoughts here. But, bear with me as I’m including a bit of miscellaneous rambling on IoT (blame it on me being your typical analytical engineer!) I’m going to lay out my thoughts on making cents, as in dollars and cents, from IoT while I also divulge my fears on the risks and hazards of it. Please, share with me your thoughts, fears, and favorite links so we can discuss this further.
IoT is already all around us but many people probably don’t really recognize this or the implications and risks or rewards this represents. I think the lack of recognition of this trend is because people still don’t realize that everything is a connected thing or could be a connected thing. Though not as prevalent an acronym as IoT, I have seen it also referred to as IoE or Internet of Everything. And while every connected thing may bring convenience in a consumer device, and prospects of great added value, uptime and reliability in an industrial device, all these connected things also bring the potential of risk and exposure to hacks.
IoT is not just the smart appliances that can communicate by texting you about groceries running low or show you what’s in your refrigerator, or the smart home device that allows you to turn something on or off, up or down, remotely or by voice command. It’s also not just modern heavy equipment, medical devices or pieces of smart cities that seem to function on autopilot. Potentially everything in and around us are the things in IoT! Amazon’s Echo, Google Home, smart connected toys, connected cars with Bluetooth, WiFi and cellular, connected deadbolts and home door security, the thermal sensor on a computer memory module or the RPM sensor on a factory machine’s motor or the compressor of a freezer at the local grocer are all things in IoT. You may be thinking to yourself, “why’s he wasting my time stating these obvious facts,” well it’s because it may be so ubiquitous already that many people, even in similar technical positions as us, haven’t stopped to think about it; or, they are completely unaware of what IoT is… I was talking with someone the other day about what topics I was considering related to IoT and the response was more or less, “what’s IoT?” – and this person is IT at the head office of a major national auto dealer network!
The already rather ubiquitous nature of IoT combined with both the lack of recognition of IoT by people along with the rather haphazard addition and implementation of connectivity to devices has me concerned about security. My fears are much higher in the devices costing hundreds of dollars, where it may be as much marketing as real functionality or value. How hardened is the security of the device itself: Is my home going to be hacked? Did you hear about the hacking of baby monitors or the weaponized teddy bear?
For IoT connected home appliances, who owns the data? Is it being reported back to the manufacturer of the device or can I set it up to only communicate with me and my device network? Is the manufacturer securing this data in transit or storage and is it truly anonymized? Could the smart appliance company scan my refrigerator’s contents and then 
sell that data to my health insurance company? Coming on the heels of the WannaCry ransomware attack and other attacks, will I be locked out of my own house for ransom or will my refrigerator order a truckload of limburger if I don’t pay up? In my opinion, there simply isn’t enough thought being put into security on many connected devices – (and that’s not just my opinion). I think this is less true in connected industrial equipment where the manufacturer is clearly aware of the ramifications of their very expensive piece of capital equipment being the source of an intrusion. Being the entry point of an attack and what this would do to their brand and on their bottom line is something I hope these companies are thinking about! Connectivity is being added to large and expensive equipment to provide valuable outcomes and not primarily to add novelty or just convenience (as is mostly the case with smaller consumer devices), and thus, is hopefully part of the development and specification for the equipment from the very inception of the development process, including security.
Well, that’s certainly enough of my whining! The truth is that I see great opportunity (to monetize the effort) in IoT for commercial or industrial settings, even if I don’t think much of connected appliances in my home! I’m very excited by the prospects and opportunities for designers and manufacturers to improve large and complex capital equipment, from high-tech med devices to high-speed machining to high-speed assembly to smart cities. Manufactures will be able to use data from connected machines to provide predictive maintenance and generally improve machine up time. Good use of the data stream from these machines can improve the ROI with its customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Whether it’s knowing that the motor on the freezer at the grocery store is drawing more amperage than it should or the condenser is running hot, with IoT, the maintenance crew can receive notice in time to service the machine before it fails. Think about all the options and opportunities to set your products and service support above that of the competition!
I think the time is now and the opportunities and tools exist to properly connect industrial and commercial machines and equipment, and monetary incentives exist. Many of these machines already have wired or wireless communication and many have thermal, speed and RPM, and other sensors. Aggregation of the data streams from these connected machines represents the opportunity to create value through analytics producing actionable information, and actionable information has value.
As demonstrated in my grocery store example, the outcomes enabled by the gathering of all this information from all these devices will not just be reactive, such as the motor has failed, but, increasingly preemptive, the motor is going to fail. This information is valuable to the end user as well as your service organization. These predictive analytics, enabled by the flood of data points, bring value to the end user by enabling the scheduling of the repair to minimize interruptions and completely avoid unplanned down time, which we know is always very disruptive to schedules and margins.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the ability to provide this functionality in your machines and 
deliver the promised outcomes to the customer is a large task. Creating value from the billions of data points, IoT’s velocity, and the variety of data produced within an IoT ecosystem requires a well-coordinated solution stack from the edge to the final analysis. Producing actionable information from what is already a tsunami of data is a challenge. This challenge is only going to grow in size as this wave of IoT in industrial and other equipment steepens. This is not going to be a solution that is easily provided by a hodgepodge of disparate systems. As I said above, it is going to require a well-coordinated solution, a comprehensive package of tools that integrate to provide the appropriate solution for many different initiatives. PTC, known historically for its Creo CAD suite (ProEngineer) and Windchill PLM and PDM, has been at the forefront of developing a complete package of tools to be able to deal with the flood of data from connected devices in the enterprise. Data collection, edge computing, analytics and predictive analytics are all parts of their ThingWorx IoT solution stack. ThingWorx isn’t exclusive to PTC-only technology; it includes strategic alliances with other important leaders such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise and EY (Ernst and Young). Joe Barkai is an analyst, author, and blogger who has thought and written much about IoT and specifically PTC’s approach and efforts in the field.
Image courtesy of PTC and HBR.org
There is a huge amount of value to designers, manufacturers, end users, and service organizations in well implemented IoT. I’m only now starting my own learning curve. I have a background in design and manufacture of large machine vision systems and automation. But, bringing the data streams together that were previously used only within the individual machine on a real-time basis to produce new actionable information is new to me and quite exciting. I see huge benefits to everyone involved. With the proper partners and tools, many hurdles can be cleared and pitfalls avoided and I think the success stories should far outweigh the failures.
Personally, I don’t care much for IoT in the consumer product market, other than some gimmicky stuff that unfortunately brings risk and exposure to me. But, in the industrial IoT world, I think there are huge opportunities to bring value to everyone involved. I’m interested in knowing your recommended resources; please don’t hesitate to share with me and others as we all head down this path.
Now, I must get to the grocery store since my refrigerator tells me I’m out of IPA!
Author Tom Higgins is an accomplished Engineer with significant experience in SolidWorks and PTC solid modeling. In his role as a Solutions Consultant at Zero Wait-State, Tom is responsible for deployment support for Engineering Collaboration and Agile PLM. He provides best practices training for design practices in configuration management and provides support for data migration and data loading.
