Are Predictive Analytics the Future of IoT?

Are you ready for smarter manufacturing? What do you need to know to leverage analytics to get the most out of your IoT efforts? As you read this, I’m in Las Vegas at IBM InterConnect with Watson IOT learning more about how predictive analytics is changing manufacturing and the supply chain. I’m sure many of my manufacturing clients want to learn more about how analytics is going help them build smarter organizations.

Today, I share some of what I currently know about how analytics are being used in manufacturing and the supply chain. Next week, when I return, I’ll share how people are using prescriptive analytics to build stronger, smarter organizations in manufacturing.

Many IoT projects work with predictive analytics to reduce operations costs. These predictive analytics can help managers know when problems are occurring and then schedule required maintenance before it’s needed, reducing critical downtime costs.

This use of IoT and analytics also reduces delivery and production disruptions. This allows organizations to better manage their service level agreements. It also reduces penalties for not delivering on time. These solutions can improve corporate profitability and fuel cost reductions. It can help provide your organization with an edge in your marketplace.

IoT and predictive analytics can help organizations manage and optimize their logistics systems. This allows organization to achieve more with less equipment, people, vehicles, and the organization’s resources. All these uses of IoT are about the science of IoT and analytics.

We can begin to see how predictive analytics can empower your IoT initiatives. This is just the beginning of IoT predictive analytics usage. I believe these processes can help reduce costs by millions of dollars for many larger manufacturing clients. I also believe that it allows us to become master of failure faster and creating shorter successes. Don’t worry, in the months and days to follow I’ll share how to create a business that thrives in this new business environment.

I believe that this new business strategy serves as the foundation for IoT projects for many years. We have just scratched the surface on how analytics impacts your business.

Now let’s look at it how predictive analytics can help you avoid the problems in your manufacturing organization. I believe this is where having a cross functional IoT team can really change the way you do business. Successful organizations need to be more innovative in how they apply these principles to build a better business model to create future opportunities for growth and success.

Predictive analytics allows you to better understand problems in your plants and distribution centers. These advanced analytics help you identify and fix problems before they occur. It can help you capture and analyze critical data across your current organization. This helps you reduce your downtime to almost zero. This alone can provide ROI that can fund your future IoT projects.

The major challenge at this point is how do you deal with all the data you are creating across your organization? How does your IoT team increase their analysis capabilities? I’m not certain they can keep up with the large volume of information coming through the system. We have a limited view of our current operations.

What happens when we begin to add additional sources of data to our decision-making processes? What happens when we add other connected operations to our network? Now what happens when we overlay our information with a predictive maintenance program? We are creating a very sophisticated decision making process to how we manage our business. I’m not certain that we won’t face some resistance at this stage of IoT development.

We can run our businesses better than we ever imagined.  We can cut costs beyond our wildest expectations and dreams. We can now begin transforming our business and global markets. Are you ready for the next phase of creating a smarter business?  I believe it could take many organizations years to get to this point. The question isn’t about how you deal with it in your organization. It’s about how your competitors deal with these new emerging technologies.

Next week, I’ll share what I learned about how organizations begin creating technology eco systems with their customers, partners, and suppliers. One that transforms their relationships with key stakeholders around the world. I’m looking forward to sharing how we begin developing organizations and supply chains of the future.

See you next week.