Microsoft has published its latest report on the impact of the internet and technologies on industries and businesses. The 2022 report indicates how manufacturers are aggressively investing in digital solutions such as IoT (Internet of Things) to make their operations and products smarter.
Microsoft’s August 2022 IoT Signals report was the first ever such report from the company. “IoT Signals is a series of impactful thought leadership content curated by Microsoft to inform the community about the latest developments and technology trends in the IoT industry”.
This year’s report is titled IoT Signals: Manufacturing Spotlight. Microsoft, Intel, and IoT Analytics surveyed hundreds of key decision makers to discover transformation strategies, execution plans, and challenges that face industries today. In the process, Microsoft discovered six new digital transformations in the industry:
- Most manufacturers are advancing their efforts to build smart factories: Smart factories with intelligent monitoring sensors will remain a priority.
- Operational improvement is a still top goal for manufacturers: Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is considered to be the most important key performance indicator to measure the success.
- Organizations are shifting investments to industrial-automation-based process control: The use of automated control systems, such as IoT and AI, to automate manufacturing processes, will be very high.
- Manufacturers face new challenges with scaling smart factory initiatives: Acquiring hardware isn’t a major challenge. However, companies are facing challenges in developing new software applications, and skill gaps remain a major concern.
- IT-OT convergence is happening in the manufacturing industry: 76% of manufacturing assets are now connected. This is allowing manufacturers to rapidly and extensively shift digital workloads and applications to public and private cloud platforms.
- Manufacturers plan to increase investments in smart connected IoT products: Manufacturers that already sell connected IoT products expect to increase investments from 33 percent today to 47 percent by 2025.
It is amply clear that manufacturers will push for higher automation and digital monitoring solutions to optimize their production. Understanding the need for a reliable partner, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is helping companies adopt IoT.