Adopting the IoT with IoT Diagnostics

Jeremy Drury with IoT Diagnostics joins our host Ken Briodagh to discuss problems in adopting IoT practices and issues surrounding companies believing they can implement these IoT devices on their own. IoT Diagnostics is a relatively young organization that branched off of a 50 year old organization called Hydrotech. Hydrotech is in the fluid power business, specifically in hydraulics. As time moved on and they wanted to begin to put diagnostic devices on their heavy machinery, they started this separate venture to provide that and cover a very interesting, niche lane of the market. As a turnkey in the industry, they are connecting prediction to production so their customers can focus on production while IoT Diagnostics provides information on preventative maintenance.

"Plug and Play"

“For the last handful of decades, blind reactive maintenance has been my customers’ chore when it comes to pump maintenance. We are now able to provide a solution.”

When it comes to adopting IoT devices and systems in a company, some like to throw around the term “Plug and Play”, but as Jeremy discusses, this is not that simple. In Iot implementation within a company it can be daunting and many customers, due to this idea of “Plug and Play”, can be very intimidated, not realizing how much effort must be put into these to make them work. As a vendor in the industry, it’s important to discuss the actual processes and how a company like IoT Diagnostics can take some of the weight off of the client’s shoulders. Jeremy talks about how it is important to not fall into the trap of thinking you know everything. Hydrotech fell into that same trap initially, thinking that since they had 50 years of pump experience, they would be able to handle the IoT side as well. They may have known industrial manufacturing operations, but were not versed in the IoT. It is very easy for larger companies to think since they know this portion of the industry, they can just bleed that over into the IoT side of things. This can waste a lot of time and money unless the company decides to interact with someone who specializes in the IoT space.

Marketplace Road Blocks

Moving forward, Jeremy speaks on the issues that come with being a vendor in the IoT market. As a vendor, it can be easy to think that you can save a lot of time by skipping the difficult talk and confusing discussions until after a sale has been made. This is not only a short sighted way of looking at things, but can hurt customer relationships down the road as well. It may be easy to get higher level executives to buy into the idea this way, but in the long run it isn’t helping either party.

In the case of the user, it is important for them to not fall into the trap of thinking it is going to be easy for them to implement themselves. This is why it is important in cases like this to get your operations manager and IT manager interacting with each other since this is really what solutions like PumpMD, IoT Diagnostics’ flagship product, are doing.

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