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Leading Digitalization Through Internet Of Things
Sanjay Agrawal
CIO-Weir Oil & Gas
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
In last two decades, we have seen, industries maturing with ERP implementation, moving along with technology like Lotus 1-2-3 to Microsoft, web portals to e-commerce, BI to big data, memory technology, consumer grade experience etc. As cost of data storage has become cheaper with introduction of cloud technology, it has become very easy to leverage big data platform with connected sensors. Another industry transformation is going to be seen in next two decade driven by Internet of Things (IoT). I wonder to imagine how world will be by 2020 with 50 billion connected sensor against approximately 100 million sensors as of 2016.

It is very important to get on IoT boat to be successful in business. IoT journey is going to impact industries heavily; we may see emerging industries and big players may be going out of business too. It is very important to define commercial objective and your customer needs before you trigger IoT implementation. It is very easy to start multiple prototypes in IoT space and get distracted from returns of investment or customer expectations. IoT Projects requires flexibility from sensors, gateway prospective and it may get fail due to rigid IT policies too. At same time all gateways sensors should have proper security mechanism to protect cyber threats.

Weir oil and gas started IoT journey recently with collaboration with multiple partners. World's best software giant Microsoft is helping us on software development over Azure cloud. World's best hardware company is helping in building hardware gateway connected with sensors. We have huge investment on the way to provide best value to our customers. IoT helps in real time monitoring and optimizing our capital equipment operations located remotely at our customer site. Event tracking, managing alerts, developing mobile apps to monitor alerts, recording business action against alerts, developing machine learnings algorithm, preventive and predictive maintenance are key components of our IoT development process. Cyber security is one of the most important considerations for IoT. You need to have right security key deployed at sensor gateway otherwise it creates backdoor for hackers to enter into your network.

With IoT, Weir can label each of their physical machines with a digital identity, which can be used to find the exact location and real time health for the machine that can be used for detecting the abnormal conditions and taking the necessary action to overcome them. IoT can also be used for accurate management of stocks and inventory thus reducing labor costs and labor hours.

IoT crosses boundaries of organizations and connects you in real time with your customers and vendors. It can communicate operational data of connected machine from your customer to your vendor for improving product quality and your warranty cost etc. There are endless benefits of IoT that I ever imagined. It helps in reducing warranty cost, improves equipment availability, reduces maintenance and inventory, improves manufacturing quality, reduces cost of ownership, provide on time services and best customer satisfaction etc. IoT informs you as event occurs. Just think, your abnormal heart rates will call ambulance automatically to your GPS location. Home automation is another example where electricity consumption of world will be optimized at least by 20 percent with IoT.

We are dreaming of a future with endless benefits of connected world. Key of success is "Do not do your own developments", but focus on right strategy, right partner, customer expectation, and quick implementation.

To conclude, we can say that rich new information sources can run at your fingertips. What seemed like a dream few years ago will be converted into reality and soon we will be surrounded by billions of connected objects.
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