IoT can do wonders for industry, governance

A centralized system managing functionality of over 100,000 billboards in the country, a destination deviation alert preventing theft in natural resource mining industry and retail stories with sensor-based coolers alerting anomalies in temperature—these are some offerings the internet of things (IoT) could facilitate for enterprises.

From clamping down on corruption to enhancing better governance, technology coupled with practical approach of problem solving, could go a long way, says Pratap Hegde, CEO of Telematics4u, an IoT solution provider that implemented these examples.

Data-analytics, being an important part of any industry solution, Hegde says it had been fairly restricted to more organized industry verticals, such as accounts management, since it happened in a computing device that could manage and analyze data fed in to it.

However, with devices getting smarter, it is now possible to collect data from outdoor objects, such as, billboards, traffic signals and goods carriers. Analyzing data collected from such sources could help build solutions around outdoor tasks using technology.

The Karnataka state government and the Andhra Pradesh state government have been using IoT-based systems to reduce the illegal sale and transport of sand mines. Telematics4u has also implemented a solution for Goa state government for transport of iron-ore. Earlier, regulations were executed from the “point of mining”, says Hegde. Now, with devices mounted on trucks, “verification has moved to the point of transportation, where vehicle authorization, route-deviation, weight-detection on a weigh bridge are monitored to prevent discrepancies in legal mining process.”

In logistics industry, where a GPS-based solution for Nissin Corporation that runs fleet of vehicles for Yamaha, improved the consignment delivery performance by 97 percent, Hegde says the scope to monitor and manage tasks is tremendous for the industry.

For retail industry, sensors identifying temperature fall in Visi coolers can help retailers in early detection of device failure, preventing losses of perishable products.

Merely identifying a problem or anomaly is not enough for an IoT based solution provider, says Hegde. It’s just one part of it. To have data analytics in place in order to apply a real-time and quick solution is the major task when dealing with machines.

When a light-bulb on one of the billboards managed by the company through a central network goes off, a notification is sent to the central server through a device mounted on the billboard. “Through a hub-and-spoke team model, that has brought on board 160 local engineers in over countries, who can use our webhosted platform, while providing tech-support for our company, we send the closest engineer in the place to solve the issue with the billboard,” says Hegde.