IoT-based monitoring of environmental conditions to improve the production performance

In order to ensure long-term competitiveness of a company, an appropriate performance measurement is essential. While the introduction of KPIs focusing on the most important information represents an effective way to monitor and evaluate performance, KPIs do not directly provide reasons behind the current situation. As the strong effects of the environmental conditions in the production area on the human performance has already been proven, their incorporation is important for further production system’s optimization. However, the basis for the required decisions builds the proper providing of relevant information. IoT application are considered as one solution for realizing an efficient and effective monitoring. Therefore, this paper first presents a concept for IoT-based monitoring of environmental conditions in the production area. Fulfilling the defined constraints scalability, adaptability and cost-effectiveness, a corresponding demonstrator has been developed and implemented in the LEAD Factory at Graz University of Technology. The demonstrator successfully enables real-time monitoring of the environmental conditions.