How Chemical Companies Can Untangle IIoT Strategies

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is an exciting and evolving set of ideas and technologies. But even experts admit it can be complicated and hard to pull apart. The challenge for chemical companies is knowing where to start and how to find value. We talked to Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Frank E. Gillett who shared his insights on how to untangle IIoT strategies.

IIoT lets you do three things you couldn’t do before

Embedding computing in things allows manufacturers to create conversations between the digital and physical worlds in three major ways:

• It can give you the digital identity of plant operations and the entire supply chain–it can help manufacturers identify and remedy poor performing equipment, quickly detect and track quality issues, and monitor the chemical process from feedstock to finished product. 

•  It can give you the status of an object. For example, operators often inspect equipment for anomalies and report their findings on a clipboard–which is slow, costly, and error prone. Now, operators can send that information to the cloud, have it analyzed based on similar inspections, and then compare it against data gathered from sensors to provide a full picture of equipment health for that particular type of asset. That means you get automatic real-world insights into the plant. Now, a person can type and get a status instantly at a fraction of the cost.

•  It gives you prescriptive advice. Software can look at trends in production processes and equipment performance to recommend actions that are aligned with the organization’s business objectives. These recommendations go beyond shutting down equipment or adjusting production processes. Companies can now turn to IIoT solutions to help them make the best decisions when it comes to: replacing vs. repairing equipment, knowing which maintenance and inspection tasks are unnecessary and wasteful, and understanding which production processes are the most energy efficient.  

Creating new value for customers, beyond just cost savings

Most companies focus only on the cost saving benefits of using IIoT. But there are ways to create value, for example, for customers. When you have a complex operation like a chemical plant, you expend a lot of effort to get efficient while keeping high levels of safety and control. But what people lose sight of is that sometimes with improved insight and IoT, you can improve your process in a way that also has customer impact.

You can improve the speed with which you deliver your product. Chemical companies can also offer customers more options for their products or flexibility in production. Finally, it helps improve transparency with customers, so they know exactly the status of an order. That all has an impact on the top line, not just costs.

Creating new value for customers

Industrial IoT isn’t just what’s under your nose, in one operational process or facility. After gaining more insights into operations and creating new value for customers, the next step is to layer in third party data. This allows a company, for example, to go upstream to suppliers to gather data about shipments and the supply chain or downstream to ask customers for data about how they use the products.