Impact of Industrial Internet of Things on Small and Medium Enterprises Assignment Sample

Introduction of Industry Internet Of Things (IoT) And Manufacturing SME's: The Impact on the Operations Activities

IIoT stands for Industry Internet of Things, this study is about analyzing the effects of IIoT on different functions of a business that are directly related to providing goods or services to the available market. This study also gives an idea of the influence of IIoT on different SMEs available in the market. Here SME stands for Small and Medium-size Enterprises these are nothing but small businesses that have limited investment, short turnover time, and a workforce that is limited to a certain number. This study is essential to understand the influence of IIoT on SMEs with regard to its operation in different sectors.

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Effect of IIoT to increase competition in manufacturing of SMEs

Small business enterprises in the market need to compete with each other in terms of manufacturing their products in the market. This can increase their overall productivity and help them to get reputed in the market (Simaet al. 2020). The IIoT can have a direct influence on SMEs to increase their competition with each other. They can provide different technologies to different Enterprises that can help them to manage their business in a convenient way. Different business enterprises using different technologies will be benefitted from using their applications as a result the competition will increase in the market. This will eventually lead to greater productivity for different types of business enterprises and will be able to cater to a variety of consumers in the market.

Affordable Technology

IIoT can provide technologies that are affordable and can be of great use in terms of manufacturing in the business. They can provide software that has relatively cheaper processors which can be really affordable for small and medium-sized business enterprises. Technologies like wireless networks provided by IIoT can be of great use and is also available in adequate numbers in the market (Marcucciet al. 2022). Wireless networks can provide easier access to businesses having multiple branches within the country. This will improve communication among them and can help them to increase their manufacturing process. Modern technologies provided by IIoT help business organizations become more efficient and more intelligent in terms of the type of products manufactured in their organization that will eventually help them to increase their sales and earn more profit.

Creating smart business enterprises

Modern technologies provided by IIoT tend to make different business enterprises smarter. A manufacturing business enterprise can always be alerted if the product produced is seen to have some fault in it. This can help them to understand the faults related to it and rectify them to produce better quality products (Wuestet al. 2022). All enterprises producing good quality products will tend to face big competition with each other as all consumers will be able to get good quality products. This can help them to stay on their toes and try to bring innovative ideas to improve the quality of products, even more, so that they can attract more consumers to increase their sales thereby increasing their profits. Business enterprises that are wholesale distributors can use modern technologies provided by the IoT to stay alert on the stock available to them and understand what is required to have adequate stock of what is required (Ciano et al. 2021). This will also lead to good competition in the market as no business enterprises will face problems related to the shortage of products in the market and therefore will be able to attract an adequate number of consumers.

Impact of IIoT to increase in the geographic extent of SMEs

IIoT has a crucial role to play for different SMEs to increase their geographical area of business in and around the country. It is important to understand the fact that different types of business enterprises benefit a lot from modern technologies, produced by IIoT that help them to increase their business in the market and is able to earn more revenue (Simaet al. 2020). SMEs can only extend their geographical area if they are able to make good profits in the market. This in return can help them to spend to expand their business in different geographic locations in order to cater to people staying in different areas, which again can help them to increase their sales.

A recent study has shown that IoT technology has helped different SMEs to increase their revenue, 45% agree with the fact that technologies provided by IoT have helped them to increase their profits considerably. The profits have seen to increase from 1% to 5% and annually the profits are believed to have increased from 5% to 15% (thesmartcityjournal.com, 2020). An increase in profits in different SMEs has helped to expand their area of business locally as well as to various parts of the country.

Different types of enterprises have been able to adapt to sustainable business practices by using modern technologies. This has eventually helped business enterprises to open market opportunities that are seen to be worth some trillion dollars and thereby able to open job opportunities for various individuals that are seeking to get jobs. This can help business enterprises to hire skilled individuals that can help in their productivity and can thereby improve their revenue in the market (Zheng et al. 2021). This again helps to expand their business to different locations and thereby will be able to increase their reputation in and around the market. An estimate shows that the price of different IoT sensors is seen to have declined over the past few decades. It was seen to have declined from $1.30 in 2004 to $0.38 in 2020 (thesmartcityjournal.com, 2020). The decrease in price is due to the increased number of supplies to different business enterprises as it resulted in the increase in sales for the product. This decrease in price helped business enterprises to spend less and therefore was able to save money and which later could help them to use this revenue to expand its business to different geographical areas of the country.

IoT devices also help to get protection from various problems that are related to structural management of the business organization. This can include waterleak management within the organization, predict the performance of a particular tool as it affect the productivity of the business.

Control of IIoT on the operation of manufacturing SMEs

Various technologies of IoT help in the operation of the SMEs. These technologies prove to be vital in the working of different SMEs as these business enterprises depend a lot on technologies to carry out their daily activities using these technologies. Business enterprises get a lot of benefit from modern technologies that affect their working as a result it has a massive influence on the daily operations of different types of SMEs (Rojas and Ruiz Garcia, 2020). It is important to discuss such application and benefits of the modern technologies that influence the operation of SMEs.

• Quality control: Business organizations tend to check the quality of the product manufactured before they release them into the market, also try to rectify the mistakes in the product before releasing them. IoT based technologies make this process very easy for the manufacturing department as trechnologioes like thermal and video sensors taht can be used to collect the complete data about the product.
• Inventory management: Usage of IoT technologies makes management of the inventory within the business organization very efficient. Each and every item in the inventory gets a Radio frequency Identifiaction (RFDI) tag and is also set with Unique Identification number (UID) which consists of encoded digital information about the item (Jiwangkuraet al. 2020). RFID tags can be used by the RFDI readers to extract data about the item and submit it later for processing in the cloud.

Figure 1: Control of IIoT on SMEs

(Source: Jiwangkuraet al. 2020)

• Safety in operation: IoT technologies is also used to ensure the safety of the workers in the business organization. Technologies are used to track the performance of workers, health conditioning of the workers, damage to any machinery in the organization that can affect the normal activities of the organization. The major impact of “sustainable production and operation management” on an organization's business operation includes leading to the downfall of all products or services that are less or non-essential (Kumar et al. 2020). Apart from this, sustainability also reduces operational costs and increases employee satisfaction and engagement rate gradually over time. Different technologies are used to prevent various assets of the business form being targeted by malicious attackers, as it can destroy the effective functioning of different assets.
• Smart metering: IoT provides sensor technologies to track the usage of water, electrical power and other fuels that are used with in the business organization. It helps to identify the specific use of the resources in specific area and also help to inculcate practices that can be very effective in using the resources.

Impact of IIoT on the operation of supply chain

Supply chain of different business enterprise is supported by Industry Internet of Things (IIoT) in various ways. The fundamental and significant level of management that maintain the flow of companies' big data, finances, as well as goods in terms of services or top products, is determined as “supply chain management” (SCM) (Koberg et al. 2019). This management system also includes raw materials procurement in order to deliver the products or goods on time at their destination. It helps to understand where the goods are stored in the inventory and when they shifted to a particular location. IIoT devices are used in supply chain as it gives a lot of benefits to different SMEs in the market.

• To check the location of goods: IoT devices can be fixed to different storage containers or on the raw materials. These devices can help to get the location of a particular products at any particular time. These devices are basically used to transfer the exact location of the product as they can be picked up by the GPS satellites and will transferred to the user that is tracking the movement of the goods. Business enterprises using these technology can feel to be secured about their product as they can track the live movement of the goods.
• To track the speed of movement: Modern technologies of IIoT can help to understand the traffic situation of different roads and help to understand how swiftly the product is going to reach the destination. This helps the supplier and manufacturer to be well prepared in advance tp receive the goods efficiently and it also reduces the time required to handle the products coming in and also help in efficient processing of the materials.
• To check the storage conditions: Specific goods like food and chemicals needs perfect and suitable condition to be store them efficiently. Food and Chemicals need to be stored in perfect conditions to preserve them efficiently else can be destroyed and all the products can go to waste. Special IoT devices can check the temperature of the room, humidity, openness to atmospheric conditions (Umair et al. 2021). All these natural factor needs to be checked to preserve the food and chemicals efficiently. Therefore different business enterprises are directly dependent on the IoT devices to help them keep their products safe.

Figure 2: Impact IIoT in SMEs

(Source: Umair et al. 2021)

• Locate goods in storage: Goods are tagged by IoT devices when they are being kept in the distribution center. The information related to a specific product is stored in the different devices like computers and tablets. The “Hybrid simulation model” consists of two major modelling methods of stimulation. This model generally includes several events such as “discrete events, system dynamics, and agent-based events” that can enhance the operational performance of the organization (Brailsford et al. 2019). The major simulation techniques that can be included in “supply chain management” are the identification of levels of cost service, bottlenecks, and the supply chain’s robustness. These IoT devices makes it easy for the workers to find the product as the data related to every product is stored in the machines and can be easily found out as to when required.

Conclusion

This study states the importance and the influence of IIoT in different places of the SMEs. This study conveys that fact that modern technologies are very essential to Small and Medium sized business enterprises. It plays a vital role in the overall development the business enterprises. It helps them to stay competitive in the market as they can produce quality products. It also helps them to increase expand the business as they are able to earn greater profits from their sales. To conclude the emergence of IIoT has had a big and a positive impact on different business Enterprises in the market.

References

Journals

Brailsford, S.C., Eldabi, T., Kunc, M., Mustafee, N. and Osorio, A.F., 2019. Hybrid simulation modelling in operational research: A state-of-the-art review. European Journal of Operational Research, 278(3), pp.721-737.

Ciano, M.P., Dallasega, P., Orzes, G. and Rossi, T., 2021. One-to-one relationships between Industry 4.0 technologies and Lean Production techniques: a multiple case study. International journal of production research, 59(5), pp.1386-1410.

Ford, M., 2020, February. The true business impact of IIoT technology. In 2020 Pan Pacific Microelectronics Symposium (Pan Pacific) (pp. 1-7). IEEE.

Jiwangkura, S., Sophatsathit, P. and Chandrachai, A., 2020. Industrial internet of things implementation strategies with HCI for SME Adoption. Journal Title, 10(1), pp.153-168.

Koberg, E. and Longoni, A., 2019. A systematic review of sustainable supply chain management in global supply chains. Journal of cleaner production, 207, pp.1084-1098.

Kumar, A., Luthra, S., Mangla, S.K. and Kazanço?lu, Y., 2020. COVID-19 impact on sustainable production and operations management. Sustainable Operations and Computers, 1, pp.1-7.

Marcucci, G., Antomarioni, S., Ciarapica, F.E. and Bevilacqua, M., 2022. The impact of Operations and IT-related Industry 4.0 key technologies on organizational resilience. Production Planning & Control, 33(15), pp.1417-1431.

Rojas, R.A. and Ruiz Garcia, M.A., 2020. Implementation of industrial internet of things and cyber-physical systems in SMEs for distributed and service-oriented control. In Industry 4.0 for SMEs (pp. 73-103). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Sima, V., Gheorghe, I.G., Subi?, J. and Nancu, D., 2020. Influences of the industry 4.0 revolution on the human capital development and consumer behavior: A systematic review. Sustainability, 12(10), p.4035.

Sima, V., Gheorghe, I.G., Subi?, J. and Nancu, D., 2020. Influences of the industry 4.0 revolution on the human capital development and consumer behavior: A systematic review. Sustainability, 12(10), p.4035.

Umair, M., Cheema, M.A., Cheema, O., Li, H. and Lu, H., 2021. Impact of COVID-19 on IoT adoption in healthcare, smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities, transportation and industrial IoT. Sensors, 21(11), p.3838.

Wuest, T., Romero, D., Khan, M.A. and Mittal, S., 2022. The Triple Bottom Line of Smart Manufacturing Technologies: An Economic, Environmental, and Social Perspective. Handbook of Smart Technologies: An Economic and Social Perspective. Routledge, London, https://www. taylorfrancis. com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429351921-20, pp.310-330.

Zheng, T., Ardolino, M., Bacchetti, A. and Perona, M., 2021. The road towards industry 4.0: a comparative study of the state-of-the-art in the Italian manufacturing industry. Benchmarking: An International Journal.

Website

thesmartcityjournal.com, (2020), IoT can help small and medium businesses implement sustainability measures Available at: https://www.thesmartcityjournal.com/en/articles/iot-can-help-small-and-medium-businesses-implement-sustainability-measures-here-s-how