Even though the Industrial IoT(IIoT) can greatly improve a facility’s operational efficiency while reducing overhead costs, many decision makers have questions about the available technology, how to introduce it, and how it can benefit their business.
Here are some of the most common questions about the IIoT:
1. What is a Smart Building?
A smart building is a facility containing sensors throughout which connect to a secure and shared network (the IIoT) for the purpose of generating data insights to inform operational improvements. The sensors monitor specific functions like lighting usage, power metering, and temperature and relative humidity levels. The centralized server or cloud-based platform stores, analyzes, and sends the data to a user-friendly software application where facility managers can view a range of historical and real-time data points to maximize energy savings and efficiency.
By capturing activity through smart sensors, IIoT connectivity eliminates the need for manual tracking data while unlocking new and dynamic insights.
2. What are Best Practices for Introducing Smart Building and IIoT Solutions?
The best approach is for facility managers, sustainability managers, or EHS managers to identify a small pilot project that demonstrates the how the IIoT can increase lighting and non-lighting energy savings. Pilot projects testing sensor-driven lighting are popular because a specific percentage of energy savings can be identified in a relativ
ely short time period. Whether you have a food and beverage processing plant, warehouse or manufacturing facility, intelligent lighting can produce optimal results in a pilot project.
For those spearheading a pilot project, it is crucial to set and meet specific goals to identify and prove value. For example, in testing the effectiveness of sensor-driven LED lighting coupled with a software application lighting control like SiteWorx Tune over a production line, some key measurements to note before and after the pilot test are:
• Energy savings
• Energy usage
• Productivity levels
3. Why is Lighting a Key Part of the IIoT?
The implementation of intelligent LED lighting fixtures is a common first step for many enterprises investing in IIoT technology. These intelligent LED fixtures work in tandem with software-based lighting controls to yield the quickest return on investment. Given that they are evenly spread across a facility, IIoT-enabled lights are the ideal source for instrumenting a broader smart building network that can easily expand to non-lighting applications like environmental monitoring and power metering.
Existing light fixtures can be connected to the IIoT for a fraction of the costs. Digital Lighting Agents (DLAs) contain smart sensors, affix to virtually any LED light fixture, and deliver actionable facility data to smart building software applications.
4. How Do I Use the Data Generated From the IIoT?
Sensors are deployed and communicating facility-wide findings to a software application but how can these insights lead to improved efficiencies?
It depends on how you plan to use the data. McKinsey reported:
“Currently, most IoT data are not used. For example, on an oil rig that has 30,000 sensors, only 1 percent of the data are examined. That’s because this information is used mostly to detect and control anomalies—not for optimization and prediction, which provide the greatest value.”
If your main goal is to spot potential problems, it’s possible you may not need to look at all of the data insights. With optimization of processes and facilities, the data often requires a closer look.
Smart building software like SiteWorx simplifies the analysis of data trends and anomalies so insights can be leveraged for facility and process improvements.
5. Can My Business Afford to Implement an IIoT System?
Intelligent lighting software applications and sensor-driven intelligent LED fixtures can yield up to 90% in energy savings. Advanced lighting control strategies such as dimming, daylight harvesting, and off-hour setback are large contributors to energy savings.
Intelligent lighting has benefits beyond energy savings such as environmental condition monitoring which helps operations managers to proactively prevent failure events like a burst pipe in a low-touch auxiliary room. The savings from protecting your facility and assets from these events can be significant.
Learn more about how to instrument your facility for the Industrial IoT and create energy savings.
