Africa has the fastest-growing economies from across the world and has massive road, rail and power infrastructure projects underway.
Coupling the said projects with Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) from the onset will improve their optimal use, reduce maintenance costs, and improve on their lifespan.
While the rapid deployment of 4G communication technologies will provide one of the missing links in the deployment of IoT technologies in the continent.
The IIoT, which has good returns on investment, refers to a huge network of physical devices inter connected by various communications technologies.
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This interconnectedness results in a system that can monitor, collect, exchange, analyse, and deliver useful insights for smarter, faster and more accurate business, technical, operational, managerial and quality of life.
It encompasses the use of sensors, communication networks and big data analytics to measure and optimise processes for improved and transformative system and operational efficiency, productivity and better performance.
The IIoT is used in many industries including but not limited to healthcare, energy, oil, gas, manufacturing, aviation and construction and operationalisation of smart cities as illustrated in figure 1 below.
The main stages of deploying an IIoT system are:
This is summarised in figure 2 below:
One of the key uses of IIoT is in the development of a reliable condition-based preventive maintenance is far much better than the traditional preventive maintenance as shown in figure 3 below:
Proactive system maintenance is more predictable, tailored, fixes systems before an actual breakdown, more reliable, cheaper and reduces system downtime when compared to the reactive system maintenance as illustrated above.
Manufacturers, infrastructure and utility companies are responsible for ensuring the safety and operability of large, dispersed assets such as roads, bridges, tunnels, power plants, power grid, airports, transport fleet, waterways, sewers and water supplies and general manufacturing plants.
Downtimes at these companies are costly to the economy, thus the need for proactive maintenance services. IIoT results in the utilisation of assets to increase the efficiency of production by way of balancing production with life cycle cost of maintenance and life of the equipment.
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Smart city projects are using sensors to help understand and control the environment on aspects such as noise and pollution levels.
In buildings, smart thermostats can be used to manage the lighting, heating, and humidity levels thus reducing energy wastage.
Investment in IoT for power infrastructure equipment has the potential to significantly reduce unscheduled downtime by identifying problems for predictive maintenance thereby improving reliability and reducing costs.
The applications are focused on the highest value assets in generation, transmission and distribution segments. The assets are continuously monitored with sensors and the collected data is used to predict the health and impending failure of the assets as well as optimal utilization of the same.
