Towards Unlocking the Potential of the Internet of Things for the Skilled Crafts

: The Internet of Things (IoT) enables companies to develop new digital business models or optimize existing processes through digitalization. Since value creation in the skilled crafts is determined by the manufacturing of material products and the provision of associated services, it is predestined for the use of IoT technologies. While these services are increasingly finding their way into the consumer market via industrial providers, the local skilled crafts with its small and medium-sized businesses lacks the knowledge to assess the potential and to adequately develop and operate IoT solutions. Our aim is to develop a manufacturer-independent platform that enables those businesses to implement IoT solutions independently. The platform is intended to support craftsmen in identifying suitable IoT use cases and resulting business models for their trades, products or services. For that, it will provide an overview of the components (e.g., sensors) required for the respective use cases. Based on this, the use cases can be set up without special know-how with the help of the platform, which also collects and manages the accruing data. Each craft business can identify new use cases and make them available to the other users of the platform, thus creating a cross-trade solution from the skilled crafts for the skilled crafts. Potential IoT use cases and their technical requirements were already identified in a pre-study in collaborative hackathons and will be evaluated during the development of the IoT Crafts Portal. The results are intended to assist craft businesses from a wide range of trades to identify and implement new business models in such a way that they can be integrated into the existing processes of the businesses. At the same time, there will be a transfer of knowledge between the craft businesses themselves, since each can use the experience of the other business or offer its own insights.