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The impact of the Internet of Things on industrial product design

The Internet of Things (IoT)—with its advancements in computing platforms, connected services and capabilities, and devices being able to be joined with other things—has come a long way in the last six years.

We’ve seen a massive increase in the number of IoT devices enter the market, some of which are really practical and some of which are more experimental.

So it should come as no surprise that industry analysts agree that IoT is going to be huge in the future. Gartner says there will be 25 billion things by 2020 which is quite remarkable but seems much more significant when you consider there will be 7.5 billion people on our planet by 2020, which means, there will be three things for every single person alive at that time.

So how will all of this impact future products and specifically industrial product design?

The big shift to solutions

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This was the question I posed to the attendees at ACE 2016, the annual meeting of the Aras Community Event, where I shared how these changes will impact the business of engineering and transform the way manufacturing companies deliver value utilizing a combination of cloud, analytics and PLM applications.

The biggest transformation will be the shift from how we think about products and what they can do for us. Product development is no longer just about physical attributes or even isolated electronic functions. As the physical and digital unite, today’s critical success factor is to change those products into something not before possible—into powerful, intelligent, connected solutions.

To help reinforce my point, note that digital functions will account for half or more of the product value in the near future. This is why I believe the big shift to solutions, with the digital service included, will be the most impactful thing in the manufacturing industry from this point forward.

We are beginning to see this shift in the lifestyle and consumer area, but the biggest opportunity is in business where the ROI gains are more definitive. Not to mention significant.

As the IoT enables a whole new breed of design & engineering leaders who see the vision for creating great solutions, the path to achieving this goal is centered on data.

Data is the fuel for innovation

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If you take the aircraft as an example, you can see how, in the above diagram, the 1970s Rolls-Royce engine had sensors, but while the data was there, it was hard to access and took a long time to get it, so the value couldn’t be derived easily. Today’s modern engine, in comparison, has double the amount of sensors, five times as many parameters, and way more information being collected. But the key difference is the near-instant accessibility of information via a connected aircraft.

So with lots of information now readily and quickly available, what can we do with it and how do we make it accessible so the right people can be much more informed?

You have to create insights.

Business analytics tools like Microsoft Power BI makes it easy to transform your data into rich visuals to graphically monitor and analyze what’s going on with the relative health of an engine and fleet over their lifecycles, helping you make decisions about what you want to do.

So, what is it we need to do in order to take advantage of the IoT within the product lifecycle?  What’s the best way?

IoT product lifecycle framework

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The challenge for the engineering department is how to effectively integrate information from the IoT into the product development process and into the product lifecycle management (PLM) system so it can be made actionable and truly drive innovation.

As experts in product development, I got together with Aras to join forces, exploring how its capabilities combined with Microsoft’s IoT innovations could address this challenge and establish a framework for how we’d do this.

We created a valid scenario for the civil aerospace industry, mapping out the lifecycle of an aircraft, the transfer of information across it, and the mix of information needed to get the complete picture—including everything from aircraft data to maintenance schedules to delay records to weather and mapping.

From there, Microsoft’s Azure IoT platform can create apps to do things like detect anomalies in the aircraft, predict remaining useful life, monitor overall performance, and access business impact.

When integrated with the ARAS Innovator product development system, it can then compare soft-life intervals versus predicted maintenance events and overall hard life, include an anomalous failure report; conduct a design failure mode effects analysis; and a product portfolio impact analysis that leads to an engineering change report for quality or configuration management.

Now that you’ve got good information to help you with your decision-making process, you can do what you need to do—whether further analysis, a new program or a complete redesign.

The big challenge: design for IoT

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While the industry has been primarily focused on IoT for the high ROI of predictive maintenance, the big opportunity that currently remains unchartered is designing for the IoT.

Designing in this new way will really drive the product roadmap so you can do things like enhance products based on the information received; increase product quality; offer upgradable functions and features; and, rather than fix a product, design it with the fix already in place. The end result is a better solution that will drive customer loyalty.

The way you can get there is through the Azure IoT Suite. We are very committed to helping you take advantage of the opportunities that the IoT presents, with pre-configured solutions to get you get started quickly.

To learn more, you can watch a replay of my full presentation at ACE 2016 and check out some of the resources below. Many thanks to our partner ARAS for hosting such a valuable event for the industry!

LinkedIn: Simon Floyd

Twitter: @FloydInnovation


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Azure IoT Suite

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Windows 10 IoT Core

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