INTERNET OF THINGS HANDBOOK
Is predictive maintenance the ‘killer app’ of Industrial IoT? Once headlined as the ‘killer app’ for IIoT, predictive maintenance has taken a while to find its feet, but progress has in fact been sure and steady, with some standout examples of successful niches.
In 2016 predictive maintenance was touted as one of the key applications for IIoT. Even in 2018, analysts such as Gartner made strong predictions of future success. Gartner predicts that by 2022, spend on IoT-enabled predictive maintenance would increase to $12.9 billion, up from $3.4 billion in 2018, with improved operational efficiencies through predictive asset maintenance leading to substantial savings of up to 40%. However, the market has not exploded quite yet. Indeed, a new survey of more than 600 high-tech executives from Bain found that industrial customers were less bullish about predictive maintenance in 2018 than they had been in 2016. This was mainly due, according to the analyst firm, to challenges in effectively gaining insight from IIoT data once gleaned, and at the other end of the equation, difficulties in implementing systems in the first place. According to Bain, another key barrier could be summarized as: “Device makers and other vendors of industrial and operational technology need to dramatically improve their software capabilities—not a historical strength for most of them.” In spite of this, the analyst firm still predicted rapid growth for IIoT, with the market doubling in size to more than $200 billion by 2021.
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DESIGN WORLD — EE NETWORK
4 • 2020
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