How has COVID-19 impacted IoT Implementation?

By Amit Singh

COVID-19 has created the need for businesses to operate remotely or with the minimal workforce within the office or at the production house/unit. This needs to work remotely has allowed has created many opportunities related to IoT and AI in sectors like Manufacturing, Healthcare, Automobile, and others. In other words, COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst for IoT implementation across sectors.

As per the Gartner report published late last year, 47% of the companies will invest on IoT and will have AI for at least one of its IoT processes. Thus, ushering the need for a digital twin to control the real process on the ground, that too, remotely.

The Manufacturing industry is the biggest of the lot where manufacturing of garments, medicines, FMCG products and what not has created opportunities of various sizes across the globe. This has created many products where wearable IoT’s, home IoT, industrial IoT’s have become the new norm for technological manufacturing of hardware/product. Today, a smart device and demand for the same have sky rocketed and can be seen around us in the form of smartwatches, smart bands, smart surveillance cameras and smart apps which utilize the capability of a device to collect and send data back to their servers.

For businesses, IoT has become more so important as remote working has created the need for the same in a huge way. Today, how employees will work and achieve the highest level of efficiency depends upon the triggers sent by various devices around them to a central location. This holds true for both blue- and white-collar jobs irrespective of their work location. Thus, creating an automated ecosystem of workflow across industries.

Similarly, COVID-19 acted as an eye-opener for the healthcare and pharma industry where healthcare organization like hospitals realized the need for monitoring devices to manage the patient influx for beds or the inventory of life-saving equipment. The need to monitor patients not just housed with them and the ones who are walking in with ailments are being sought upon at various touchpoints. For the Pharma sector, the need for quicker turnaround of processes and production has been the biggest help, as it cuts down the wastage and brings the highest level of OEE, has been achieved by IoT and AI put together.

Even in logistics and banking sector, the need to minimize human interference has allowed IoT to gain a foothold to track packages or financial transactions to the betterment of customer satisfaction. Tracking of shipments in timely updates and where the money is going and what could be the next big move of a bank’s customers are predicted using IoT and AI to maximize the customer benefit and reduce the bank's risk element.

Conclusion

IoT is everywhere but it is not just recognized by many as the buzz goes to AI which crunches the data provided by IoT devices. The Amazon Echo, Google Home, Smart bulbs, etc. are the most common examples of IoT devices around us but less we realize that the things we are using in our daily lives has an IoT imprint on them which will only increase with the passage of time. The future is connected and IoT provides so much data that it will become the main feed for AI to crunch on and will be needing efficient MLOps for the future.

Amit Singh is the Founder and CEO at Teliolabs.