Reply: IoT and 5G drive industrial innovation

Reply

Reply's new research "Industrial IoT: A Reality Check" explores two key areas that are driving the growth of the IoT within the industrial market: smart factory and smart transport & logistics.

Connecting machinery and tools , Industrial IoT (IIoT) enables manufacturing companies to improve production visibility in real time. The huge amount of data coming out of Industrial IoT devices is increasingly the fuel for optimizing production, improving the quality of delivery, introducing predictive maintenance, automating the supply chain, and much more.

"Without Industrial IoT, Industry 4.0 cannot exist. Data is fundamental for a "smart" evolution of the industrial world and the Industrial IoT is what allows an infrastructure to collect them, transmit them to the cloud and manage subsequent analyzes, within a virtuous circle of business benefits " commented Filippo Rizzante, CTO Reply.

The research, carried out thanks to the data collected with the proprietary platform Trend SONAR and the support of Teknowlogy Group, also examines the main markets for smart factories and smart transport & logistics, grouped together in two clusters: "Europe-5" (Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands) and "Big-5" (USA, China, India, Brazil and Great Britain).

Despite the difficult climate economic growth in 2020, both clusters saw small investment growth in both smart factories and the smart transport & logistics area, while further significant growth is expected by 2025.

Overall, the smart market fact ory of the Big-5 cluster, led by the US, will exceed 86 billion euros in 2025, with heavy investments in platforms, predictive solutions and remote monitoring; while the smart transport & logistics market will exceed 15 billion.

In the Europe-5 cluster, the smart factory market will grow almost three times in all countries, including Italy, reaching a total of over 23 billion euros in the five countries, and will see Germany in the leading position, followed by France and Italy (from 580 million euros in 2020 to 1,547 million euros in 2025). Platforms will experience exponential growth, and companies will invest to better manage quality and reduce costs.

Germany will also remain the leader in the smart transport & logistics area, but other nations will still see significant growth . This Cluster is expected to reach a total of 3.6 billion euros in 2025. In this sector, despite Italy having suffered a slight decline in 2020 compared to 2019, the growth forecasts for the next five years are more than promising: we are talking about + 130% (from 131 million euros in 2020 to 301 million euros). Euro in 2025).

The adoption of low-cost sensors and 5G networks, driven by large investments by Telco, will further improve the diffusion of Industrial IoT. For example, the improvement of communications between autonomous vehicles / robots, artificial intelligence, and machinery, combined with increased computing power and very low latency will not only improve the efficiency of the plants, but also their safety.

Furthermore, the possibility of creating high-density private networks will allow not only a greater implementation of the Industrial IoT, but also the connection of a significant number of sensors, machinery, vehicles and robots and the possibility of making greater use of augmented reality and virtual support for connected workers.

The constant growth of connected devices and their heterogeneity require robust management of security and installation and maintenance policies of both devices and networks. Based on the experience gained, Reply believes that companies need micro-segmented environments (on-premise and / or cloud-based), stable and ready to react to traditional and new dangerous technologies / techniques, reducing the probability of success. of new types of attacks.

Filippo Rizzante, Reply CTO The analysis of the IoT architecture, industrial components and entire infrastructures will help companies to eliminate gaps, vulnerabilities and threats in advance. But it is not just a technological issue: the training programs for employees, the study and continuous testing of any device used will be fundamental.

If in recent years the Industrial Internet of Things technologies have been used above all for improve the efficiency of factories and logistic centers, during the pandemic new investments went into improving the safety of workers.

The long-term trend, however, will directly involve final consumers: the success of the so-called " connected products "is accelerating investments in solutions in which the collection and processing of usage data does not only concern the production machinery, but also the use of finished products.

The redesign of design processes , production and distribution of products equipped with IoT connectivity is allowing the construction of value-added services and the possibility of updating and maintaining many household appliances, cars, robots, electronic and entertainment devices.