Brexit and the IoT: Let’s Capitalize on the Opportunity, Not Wallow in Despair

Wow: as the old Dinah Washington ditty went, “What a Difference a Day Makes.” Since last Thursday, I doubt even the most diehard IoT zealots have thought about anything but Brexit and its implications.  Now that we’ve had a little time to reflect and digest exactly how dire the possible problems are, I’d like to suggest we look at the bright side, and think the IoT could play a major role in improving everyone’s life in the future — not just the economic elites.

Wei ji: crisis combines danger and opportunity

Wei ji: crisis combines danger and opportunity

I used to be a corporate crisis manager, called in when major corporations had done amazingly stupid things and their reputations and sometimes even their survival was in question. For those occasions, I kept a battered greeting card in my briefcase with the calligraphy for wei ji, the Chinese ideogram for crisis. I’d point out that it c0mbined danger — that was obvious! — with the less-obvious one for opportunity. I still believe that, even in the global confusion and concern resulting from Brexit, and I think there’s a role for the IoT in the new world order.

Above all, this should be a wake-up call for the global economic and political elites that, going forth, change must benefit everyone, not just them.

When it comes to the IoT, that means that it can’t be yet another excuse for automating jobs out of existence, but must instead be a way of empowering workers and creating new opportunities:

  • One that occurred to me is near & dear to my heart, because I thought of a primitive version 25 years ago: creating 30″ high 4′ x 8′ garden “boxes” planted using Mel Bartholomew’s “Square Foot Gardening” methods, that would allow people worldwide to grow their own veggies in very small spaces.  Add in IoT water sensors so that the beds could be watered precisely when and in the amount needed, and people everywhere could become self-sufficient (e-mail me if you’re interested in commercializing the approach)!  It would be the cheapie’s variation on the neat, but costly, Grove Labs home ag solution.
  • smart asthma inhaler

    smart asthma inhaler

    Increasingly, global populations will be centered in cities, so the whole smart cities approach will improve everyone’s quality of living by cutting down traffic, reducing municipal operating costs, and improving public health. Even fat cats get upset when their limos are stuck in traffic, so this is a win-win.
    One of my favorite examples of the smart city approach is the asthma inhaler cum GPS that automatically alerts public health authorities when a user — most frequently, sadly, a low-come minority person — uses the inhaler, allowing them to identify dirty air “hot spots” where cleanup efforts need to be focused.

  • I’ve always been impressed about the outside-the-box mobile device apps coming out of Africa that make their lack of conventional infrastructure into an advantage. One of the coolest examples of that when it comes to the IoT is the example INEX’s Chris Rezendes told me about: how Grundfos, the world’s leading pump company, releases the data from senors on its pumps for village water supplies in Africa and some smart guys have come up with an app that allows the village women to check in advance whether the village well is working before they trudge miles to get the watch (which, BTW, I hope they’re carrying back in these way-cool appropriate technology rolling water carriers, the “Hippo”).

  • Also, the IoT could empower assembly-line workers and others if smart managers realize that they too should be among those sharing real-time IoT data: yes, a lot of IoT data can be used on a M2M basis so one machine’s status will regulate another’s, but there’s also a potential role for workers, with their years of experience and horse-sense, using that data to fine-tune processes themselves to optimize efficiency. Artificial Intelligence is great, but I still think there’s a role for enlightened humans, even if they don’t have a lot of education and prestige within the corporation.

Those are just a few ideas on how the IoT might be used to improve everyone’s lot in the coming years and undermine the current status quo that benefits only a few.  Let me know if you have ideas on how to foster this revolution and make Brexit the catalyst for positive change.

 

 

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Game-changer! AR Enables IoT merging of physical and digital

Several months ago I wrote about an analogy to the world of business prior to the Internet of Things,  in which a metaphorical illness called “Collective Blindness” affected every human for all time, so that we were unable to peer inside things. We just accepted that as an inevitable limitation, creating all sorts of work-arounds to try to be able to cope in the absence of real-time information about things of all sorts.

I then said that the Internet of Things would allow us to end Collective Blindness, getting — and sharing — the real-time data we’d need to make better decisions and work more precisely.

Now I’ve seen the tool that allows us to end that Collective Blindness: PTC’s Augmented Reality (AR), tool, Vuforia.

At last week’s PTC Liveworx conference, there was a mind-blowing demo of Vuforia by Terri Lewis, director of solutions and tech at Caterpillar, as it applied to the company’s XQ Gen Set, a portable power generator for job sites and special events.  As PTC CEO James Heppelmann reiterated several times, the software is creating

a single new reality that’s physical and digital at the same time….. and democratizing AR.”
(my emphasis)

Used as a sales tool, Vuforia Studio Enterprise lets the customer look inside the product, as contrasted with a static brochure.  That’s neat, but what’s really incredible is how it lets maintenance people peer inside the device, and do so in a way (as Heppelmann said, “humans prefer to use sight an sound simultaneously”) that is much more effective in terms of zeroing in not only on what’s wrong, but also these specifics (such as replacement part numbers, etc.) to quickly repair them.  Incidentally Heppelmann and Harvard Prof. and biz guru Michael Porter are collaborating on another article, this one on how to apply AR in a business setting (turns out that Porter is a member of the PTC board, and in the past few years he’s been using it as a lab to evaluate business use of the IoT).

Another example of Vuforia’s work in maintenance demonstrated at the conference was by Flowserve, the world’s largest flow control company. Vuforia helps them manage devices in real-time (the person at the pump can see what is actually happening), cutting the number of repair trips from three to one, because they are able to diagnose the problem at the beginning, and bring the replacement parts with them. Then they can do do real-time simulations to see if the problem has been solved. The company believes they saved $2 billion in excess repart costs in 2015 alone.

 Vuforia Studio AR lets users set up augmented reality simulations in minutes without writing code, and can also be used in product design review.

I had a chance to try the XQ Gen Set visualization with an AR headset myself, and it was as powerful as promised.

I must admit the first time I tried on an AR headset — and almost jumped on one of the other users because I was jumping back to avoid falling several hundred feet off a sharp cliff into the ocean — I was amazed by the realism, but didn’t really think much about its serious business uses.  PTC’s Vuforia Studio AR made me a believer: it’s helping us cure Collective Blindness, and AR will be yet another tool to bring about unprecedented precision and efficiency in every aspect of manufacturing and product maintenance!

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Liveblogging #IoT @ #Liveworx 2016 — day 2

Colin Angle, CEO, iRobot:

  • smart home: people have hard time learning how to use current generation of smart home devices. Unacceptable delay in activation. we need “just live your life, and the house does the right thing.” Shouldn’t have to pull out phone.  Will be aware of your location, act naturally.
  • “Need metaphor of the room to exist” — and robot will do that. Cool: Future iRobot could do that while doing its own job. New generation of iRobot has mapped 1/2 billion sq. feet in less than a year.
  • Would be a lot cooler if you can just buy a smart bulb, screw it in, and it would just work without having to do anything.
  • Pogue: how do you deal with the criticism that iRobot LOOKS as if it is cleaning randomly? Angle: Customers just cared that it actually did the job. “Just make it clean better” — I don’t care how long it takes, because I’m not there.
  • Next generation of robotics will be manipulation.
  • Angle: “if you’re worried about AI taking over, don’t worry about me, worry about the marketing guys.  … I just vacuum floors.”  This is so funny: “I used to be a self-respecting robot scientist, but it wasn’t until I became a vacuum salesman that I made any money.”

Eric Schaeffer, Accenture:

  • significant change, affecting both demand and supply. No industry unaffected.
  • to remain competitive, countries and companies will have to be at edge of innovation. Faster than ever.
  • strategies focused on cost-cutting less effective than emphasis on new products
  • World Economic Forum looking at impact of internet on business and society
    • 1st report: industrial internet of things & how it would transform industries. Adoption accelerating.
    • 3-4 yrs. from now, major structural changes, massively transformative (but you can begin w/ incremental change).
    • only 7% of 500 companies surveyed said they had comprehensive IoT strategy.
  • illustrations: water distribution network, dramatic time savings in time to install plane seats.
  • where’s the value? integrate smart products and back-office systems for IoT and As-a-Service Enabled approach.
  • Moving to multi-dimensional definition of a product.
  • Companies will become platforms
  • Sales models will move to as-a-service
  • They have identified 30% “uplift” for generic company. Specific improvements from digitization of the enterprise varies from one industry to another
  • Examples:
    • a Euro telecoms company: using a Google Glass-style product for field technicians at job sites and to capture data in field. 20-40% productivity gains.
    • pay-per-use vehicle services: a French tire company that wants to create 1 b Euro biz in “mobility.” — from selling tires to selling outcomes! Money-back guarantee. 2.5 liters reduction in gas use for 100 km driven — huge reduction in trucking companies. 
    • connected homes: working with multiple clients to define what the services will be.
  • Scope and scale of changes acute.
  • Recent survey: 42% of companies have said improvement has been in how they interact with customers.
  • Leading companies moving from product push to creating value by:
    • focusing on higher value solutions
    • focusing on enhanced experience
    • focusing on customer outcomes.
  • still focus on the what, but also the how!
  • dramatic shift to “Total Experience Innovation.”
    • Be Solution Centric: all centered on customer
    • Build an Insight Platform: continuously renew
    • Drive Pivotal Leaders: find right leaders.
  • Examples:
    • ALS patients: helping them regain control of their lives through wearables, displays, etc. done with Phillips.
    • industrial equipment manufacturer: breaking silos. Innovation digital factory: to instill connectivity into the biz, and build outcome-based offers, and increasing level of engagement with customers.
  • Future:
    • implantable technologies
    • wearable internet
    • IoT everywhere
    • connected home
    • driverless cars
    • robotics
    • sharing economy

Here’s the main event!  Prof. Michael Porter, iRobot’s Colin Angle & PTC’s Jim Heppelmann on IoT transformation:

  • Porter & Heppelmann’s research collaboration on IoT: he was a PTC board member. “Magical opportunity”
  • Porter: both products and internal operations are changing due to IoT
  • Porter: still in early stages of industrial conversion
  • Porter: IoT is wrong term: real emphasis is change in products and what they can do. Embedding in service companies. Every service business will be affected.
  • Heppelmann: the IoT also affects how the customer operates the product.
  • Angle: iRobot has jumped into IoT with both feet. Touches every aspect of their biz.
  • Heppelmann: missed the human element in this. That led to their AR initiative, so people could relate to the new products in ways that are both physical and digital.
  • Angle: iRoomba sending data back in real time on how it’s being used. No more focus groups! Robot part of design team.
  • Heppelmann: fundamentally different design process now.
  • Porter: who collects, who decides how to use the data? New chief data officer position.
  • Angle: who is best to handle the data? Idea of chief data officer interesting. Product ID a new competency.
  • Porter: starting to see new organizational structures pop up. Becoming possible to sell almost anything as a service.
  • Heppelmann: “devops” — combine development & operations. Chief Data Officer — whose job is it to decide what the data is telling various departments?
  • Porter: can’t have handoffs between each group, because you need continuing dialogue.
  • Heppelmann: industrial companies can learn from software companies, with techniques such as agile dev in software.  Continuous improvement. Also, “customer analytics.”

 

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Liveblogging #IoT @ #Liveworx 2016

1st up is Jim Heppelmann, PTC CEO and co-author w/ Michael Porter of the great 2-part HBR series on IoT strategy & tactics.

But 1st, few words from David Pogue, the great consumer tech writer: imagine his surprise when he sees his kids at home in CT have cranked the Nest 2 66 degrees. So he turns it up, LOL.

Heppelmann:

  • part of a fundamental transformation
  • one of biggest game-changing technologies of our time
  • things evolving from being simple physical products to complex systems, systems of systems
  • “single new reality that’s physical and digital at the same time”
  • example of rapid change: Augmented Reality & Virtuality combined with IoT: Terri Lewis, director of solutions & tech at Caterpiller — XQ Gen Set — rental power for job sites & sport events — “asset utilization” big deal for rentals & for the customers — can operate from a remote device (iPad in this case). PTC’s new product is Vuforia Studio Enterprise — “democratizing AR.” When used as a sales tool, lets customer look inside the product, vs. a static brochure.
  • humans prefer to use sight and sound simultaneously: he & Porter are working on another article on adding AR to business setting.
  • analytics: analytics is the new refinery for data, which is the new oil.  Announcing Thingworx Analytics. Example: Flowserve, an industrial products company.World’s largest flow control company. Helps to do real-time management of the device. It now takes only 1 repair trip to fix assembly rather than 3 before, because they know the actual problem at beginning. Do real-time simulations to see if it was solved.  Augmented Reality allows the person right at the pump, to see what is actually happening — that wasn’t possible before. Radically reduces time & money necessary to get it back online — reducing what was a $2 billion loss in 2015 alone.
  • New announcement: HPE industrial, hardened server to run such a system.
  • Engineering products: working with a group of local STEM kids in a robotics competition, FIRST Robotics. Use AR as part of the design review process, using Google Cardboard & Agile Engineering process. Team demo’s it.
  • He thinks they are THE company for digital/physical convergence.

Michael Campbell, Vuforia Studio AR:

  • augmented reality without writing code
  • reduces the CAD data set by 150x to optimize it, but protects all the visual richness
  • use in design review
  • can create compelling AR in a few minutes! Woo!
  • can actually put the digital info on the physical product itself.  Creo Illustrate for tech illustrators: step-by-step illustrations (wow, would that be great for product assembly and repair uses!). Intuitive interface, drag-n-drop.

 

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