Live Blogging #LlveWorx ’18, Day 2

Aiden Quilligan, Accenture Industry X.0, on AI:

  • Mindset and AI: must undo what Hollywood has done on this over years, pose it as human vs. machine.
  • We think it should be human PLUS machine.
  • he’s never seen anything move as fast as AI, especially in robotics
  • now, co-bots that work along side us
  • exoskeletons
  • what do we mean by AI?  Machine learning.  AI is range of technologies that can learn and then act. AI is the “new work colleague” we need to learn to get along with.
  • predictions: will generate #2.9 trillion in biz value and recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity in 2021.
  • myths:
    • 1) robots evil, coming for us: nothing inherently anti-human in them.
    • 2) will take our jobs. Element of truth in terms of repetitive, boring work that will be replaced. They will fill in for retiring workers. Some new industries created by them.  Believe there will be net creation of jobs.
    • 3) current approaches will still work.

6 steps to the Monetization of IoT, Terry Hughes:

  • Digital native companies (Uber) vs. digitally transforming companies
  • also companies such as Kodak that didn’t transform at all (vs. Fujifilm, which has transformed).
  • Forbes: 84% of companies have failed with at least one transformation program.  Each time you fail you lose 1/2 billion
  • steps:
    • 1) devices with potential
    • 2) cloud network communication
    • 3) software distribution
    • 4) partner and provider ecosystem
    • 5) create a marketplace.
    • 6) monetization of assets.
  • crazy example of software company that still ships packages rather than just download because of initial cost in new delivery system
  • 3 big software challenges for digitally transforming company
    • fragmented silos of software by product, business unit & software
    • messy and complex distribution channels
    • often no link between software and the hardware that it relates to
  • importance of an ecosystem
    • Blackberry example of one that didn’t have the ecosystem
  • 3rd parties will innovate and add value around a manufacturer’s core products
  • in IoT it’s a land grab for mindshare of 3rd-party innovators.
  • need strong developer program
  • tools for app development and integration
  • ease of building and publishing apps
  • path to discovery and revenue for developer
  • IDC: developer ecosystem allow enterprises to massively scale distribution
  • digitally native companies have totally different models (will get details later…)
  • hybrids:
    • GE Healthcare:  working with Gallus BioPharma
    • Heidelberg & Eig have digital biz model for folding carton printing. Pay per use
  • Ford is heading for mobility as a transformation

 


Bernard Marr: Why IoT, Combined With AI and Big Data, Fuels 4th Industrial Revolution

 

  • connecting everything in house to Internet
  • Spotify: their vision is they understand us better. Can correlate your activity on Apple Watch (such as spinning) & create a play list based on that)
  • FitBit: the photo will estimate your calorie content.
  • John Deere
  • ShotSpotter: the company that monitors gun shots
  • understanding customers & markets better than before:
    • Facebook: better at face recognition than we are. They can predict your IQ, your relationship status.
  • Lot of frightening, IMHO, examples of AI analyzing individuals and responding without consideration of ethics and privacy
  • 3) improving operations and efficiency:
    • self-driving boats
    • drones
    • medicine through Watson

panel on IoT:

  • Don’t be afraid of the cloud
  • Ryan Cahalane, Colfax: prepare for big, start small and move fast. They had remarkable growth with switch to IoT.  Not a digital strategy, but digital in everything they do. Have “connected welders,” for example.
  • Justin Hester, Hirotec: most importatnt strategic digital transformation decision your organization can make is the selection of a platform. The platform is the underlying digital thread that enables your team to meet  the unique and chanding needs of your organization and to scale those solutions rapidly. “Assisted reality” in ThingWorx
  • Shane O’Callahan, TSM (Ireland):  Make industrial automation equipment for manufacturing. Understanding your key value driver is where to start. Then start samll, scale fast and get a win!

Jeffrey Miller, PTC: Digital Transformation:

  • if you start with digital strategy you’re starting in wrong place Start with business strategy. 
  • Couple with innovation vision merged with digital strategy. Add business use cases.
  • Jobs: it’s not how much you spend on R & D, but “about the people you have, you you’re dled, and how much you get it”
  • create an environment for innovation
    • do we encourage experimentation?
    • is it ok to fail
  • identify digital technologies to provide the required operating capabilities:
    • have we conducted proofs of concept?
    • experimented, tested  and validated?
    • reviewed use cases & success studies?
    • delivered small, important, scalable successes?

Matt,  PTC: Bringing Business Value to AR:

  • augmented service guidance
  • remote expert guidance
  • manufacturing: machine setup and turnover, assembly and process
  • example of Bell & Howell towers to store online sales in WalMart stores for customer pickup: very expensive to send one to a store for salesperson to use in sales — now just use AR app to give realistic demo without expense.
  • service: poor documentation organization, wants accurate, relevant, onsite info for technician. Want to remove return visits because the repair wasn’t done 1st time, or there’s a new technician. Manuals in binders, etc. Instead, with AR, requirements are quick access to current info. Finally, a demo.

Suchitra Bose, Accenture: Manufacturing IIoT, Driving the Speed of Digital Manufacturing:

  • convergence of IT and OT
  • expanding digital footprint across your entire factory
  • PTC has wide range of case studies (“use cases” in biz speak…) on aspects of IoT & manufacturing.

I have seen the future, and it’s written in Chalk (PTC’s Vuforia Chalk, that is!)

I just had to take time out from my live blogging of PTC’s LiveWorx ’18 to focus on one of the topics Jim Heppelmann mentioned in passing in his keynote: the new variation on the company’s Vuforia AR app: Chalk.

Significant in its own right, I suspect Chalk will have an additional, critical impact: democratizing AR.

It is an app aimed at, and accessible to, both corporate audiences AND the general public.  Downloadable for both iPhone & iPads & Android devices, I suspect that it will quickly become popular both to support remote repair staff for companies and just plain folks who are trying, for example to help a family member far away to deal with a car or plumbing repair. Not to mention the fact (mandatory disclaimer: while I work part-time for Apple, I’m not privy to any corporate internal strategy) that the spiffy new $329 6th-generation iPad really facilitates AR, and Chalk was developed in conjunction with the Apple ARKit technology so it should really become popular.

Chalk has two components:

  • real-time video and voice sharing of the same view
  • Chalk Marks, simple handswipes that allow one of the participants to highlight the part that is the subject of the question.  The “Marks” appear to be anchored to the subjects they’re “drawn” on.

Real-world uses vary from a remote super-expert helping a field technician to identify and deal with a rare problem to your millennial helping Mom master her personal technology. I saw an amazing demo this morning with one mechanic in Germany (ok, he was actually 2′ away…) directing the mechanic working on a Mercedes how to add coolant.  As the press release announcing the app said:

“Today, remote assistance can be frustrating and cumbersome. People struggle for words to describe things that are unfamiliar, whether it be a new appliance or the back of a cable box. And when the problem can’t be described clearly, it becomes almost impossible for someone else to solve. Vuforia Chalk provides a simple and intuitive solution where people can now use Chalk Marks to get a common understanding of a problem, and the steps required to solve it.”

I’ve written before that I suspected many companies got into e-commerce in the 9o’s because a CEO’s kids got him to order a book from Amazon during the holidays & he came back raving about this new device.  I can’t help thinking that this will be just the kind of low-cost (heck, in this case, no-cost) introduction to AR And the IoT that will break down some companies’ skepticism, pay off with immediate bottom line benefits in cost savings and efficiency in service operations, and get them interested in most expensive AR such as PTC’s digital twins and predictive maintenance.  Or, as ABI analyst Eric Abbruzzes said:

“Mainstream augmented reality is at the beginning of a strong positive inflection point, and Vuforia Chalk is a great example of how AR can transition from enterprise-only to use in everyday life,” said Eric Abbruzzese, ABI Research. “We see Vuforia Chalk as a fundamentally disruptive form of remote communication that will be well received across multiple sectors and for multiple use cases.”

Now to get my granddaughter to download the app so we can collaborate on the 3D-printer that I got her for her 12th- birthday!

Wahoo! Liveblogging #Liveworx ’18!

Always my fav event, I’ll be liveblogging #LiveWorx ’18.  Stay tuned!

Keynote: Jim Heppelmann:

  • “from a place to a pace” — how fast are we moving?
  • no longer OK to think of a future destination, builds inertia (“your main competitor”). Disruption may have already happened. Hard to sustain advantage due to pace of change. Must “embrace a pace of change”
  • Um, this sounds like argument for my circular company paradigm shift!!!
  • Customer Experience Center will occupy top floor of new building.
  • combo of  physical, human and digital — transforming all at once speeds change:
    • physical: been constrained by subtractive manufacturing, while nature improves via cell division (i.e., additive). “Adopt Mother Nature’s mindset.” — new additive aspects of Creo. Example of Triumph cycle sing-arm using additive. CREO uses AI to optimize performance: non-symmetrical design. Still need to use simulation tests: new intermittent, continuous style: they are doing new partnership with ANSYS (product simulation software), unified modeling and simulation with no gaps. Historically, simulation only used at end of design cycle, now can use it throughout the process: “pervasive simulation.”
      • ANSYS “Discovery Live”: optimizes for real-time. Integrates with Creo — instant feedback on new designs. “simulation critical to innovation.”
    • digital: working with Microsoft Azure (Rodney Clark, Microsoft IoT VP). Microsoft investing $5b in IoT.  1st collaboration is an industrial welder: IoT data optimizes productivity.  BAE can train new employees 30-40% quicker.
    • finally, human: “Mother Nature designed ups to interface with the physical. How do we integrate with the digital? — Siri, Alexa, Cortna still too slow.  Sight is our best bet. “Need direct pipeline to reality ” — that’s AR. “Smart, connected humans.” Sysmex: for medical lab analysis. Hospitals need real-time access to blood cell analysis. They have real-time calibration of analysis equipment. Also improving knowledge of the support techs, using AR and digital twins when repairs are needed.
      • Will help 2.5 billion workers become more productive
      • AR can project how a process is being programmed (gotta see this one. will try to get video).
      • All of their human/digital interface initiatives united under Vuforia. Already have 10,000 enterprises using it.
    • Factories are a new focus of PTC. 200 companies now using it in 800 factories. Examples from Woodward & Colfax.  Big savings on new employee training.

Keynote: Prof. Linda Hill, HBS, “Collective Genius”:

  • Innovation= novel + useful
  • Example of Pixar: collective genius “filmmaking is a team sport.”
  • 3 characteristics of creative organizations they looked at:
    • “creative abrasion” — diversity and debate
    • “creative agility” — quickly test the idea & get feedback. Experiment rather than run pilots, which often include politics
    • “creative resolution” — ability to make integrative decisions. Don’t necessarily defer to the experts.
    • sense of community and shared purpose.
  • values: bold ambition, collaboration, responsibility, learning.
  • rules of engagement: respect, trust, influence, see the whole, question everything, be data-driven.

Ray Miciek, Aquitas Solutions. Getting Started on IoT-based Maintenance:

  • his company specializes in asset maintenance.
  • “produce products with assets that never fail”
  • 82% of all asset failures are random, because they are more IT-related now
  • find someplace in org. where you could gain info to avoid failure.
  • Can start small, then quickly expand.

 

“All of Us:” THE model for IoT privacy and security!

pardon me in advance:this will be long, but I think the topic merits it!

One of my fav bits of strategic folk wisdom (in fact, a consistent theme in my Data Dynamite book on the open data paradigm shift) is, when you face a new problem, to think of another organization that might have one similar to yours, but which suffers from it to the nth degree (in some cases, even a matter of literal life-or-death!).

That’s on the likelihood that the severity of their situation would have led these organizations to already explore radical and innovative solutions that might guide your and shorten the process. In the case of the IoT, that would include jet turbine manufacturers and off-shore oil rigs, for example.

I raise that point because of the ever-present problem of IoT privacy and security. I’ve consistently criticized many companies’ lack of attention to seriousness and ingenuity, and warned that this could result not only in disaster for these companies, but also the industry in general due to guilt-by-association.

This is even more of an issue since the May roll-out of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), based on the presumption of an individual right to privacy.

Now, I have exciting confirmation — from the actions of an organization with just such a high-stakes privacy and security challenge — that it is possible to design an imaginative and effective process alerting the public to the high stakes and providing a thorough process to both reassure them and enroll them in the process.

Informed consent at its best!

It’s the NIH-funded All of Us, a bold effort to recruit 1 million or more people of every age, sex, race, home state, and state of health nationwide to speed medical research, especially toward the goal of “personalized medicine.” The researchers hope that, “By taking into account individual differences in lifestyle, environment, and biology, researchers will uncover paths toward delivering precision medicine.”

All of Us should be of great interest to IoT practitioners, starting with the fact that it might just save our own lives by leading to creation of new medicines (hope you’ll join me in signing up!). In addition, it parallels the IoT in allowing unprecedented degrees of precision in individuals’ care, just as the IoT does with manufacturing, operating data, etc.:

“Precision medicine is an approach to disease treatment and prevention that seeks to maximize effectiveness by taking into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle. Precision medicine seeks to redefine our understanding of disease onset and progression, treatment response, and health outcomes through the more precise measurement of molecular, environmental, and behavioral factors that contribute to health and disease. This understanding will lead to more accurate diagnoses, more rational disease prevention strategies, better treatment selection, and the development of novel therapies. Coincident with advancing the science of medicine is a changing culture of medical practice and medical research that engages individuals as active partners – not just as patients or research subjects. We believe the combination of a highly engaged population and rich biological, health, behavioral, and environmental data will usher in a new and more effective era of American healthcare.” (my emphasis added)


But what really struck me about All of Us’s relevance to IoT is the absolutely critical need to do everything possible to assure the confidentiality of participants’ data, starting with HIPP protections and extending to the fact that it would absolutely destroy public confidence in the program if the data were to be stolen or otherwise compromised.  As Katie Rush, who heads the project’s communications team told me, “We felt it was important for people to have a solid understanding of what participation in the program entails—so that through the consent process, they were fully informed.”

What the All of Us staff designed was, in my estimation (and I’ve been in or around medical communication for forty years), the gold standard for such processes, and a great model for effective IoT informed consent:

  • you can’t ignore it and still participate in the program: you must sign the consent form.
  • you also can’t short-circuit the process: it said at the beginning the process would take 18-30 minutes (to which I said yeah, sure — I was just going to sign the form and get going), and it really did, because you had to do each step or you couldn’t join — the site was designed so no shortcuts were allowed!:
    • first, there’s an easy-to-follow, attractive short animation about that section of the program
    • then you have to answer some basic questions to demonstrate that you understand the implications.
    • then you have to give your consent to that portion of the program
    • the same process is repeated for each component of the program.
  • all of the steps, and all of the key provisions, are explained in clear, simple English, not legalese. To wit:
    • “Personal information, like your name, address, and other things that easily identify participants will be removed from all data.
    • Samples—also without any names on them—are stored in a secure biobank”
    • “We require All of Us Research Program partner organizations to show that they can meet strict data security standards before they may collect, transfer, or store information from participants.
    • We encrypt all participant data. We also remove obvious identifiers from data used for research. This means names, addresses, and other identifying information is separate from the health information.
    • We require researchers seeking access to All of Us Research Program data to first register with the program, take our ethics training, and agree to a code of conduct for responsible data use.
    • We make data available on a secure platform—the All of Us research portal—and track the activity of all researchers who use it.
    • We enlist independent reviewers to check our plans and test our systems on an ongoing basis to make sure we have effective security controls in place, responsive to emerging threats.”

The site emphasizes that everything possible will be done to protect your privacy and anonymity, but it is also frank that there is no way of removing all risk, and your final consent requires acknowledging that you understand those limits:

“We are working with top privacy experts and using highly-advanced security tools to keep your data safe. We have several  steps in place to protect your data. First, the data we collet from you will be stored on=oyters with extra security portection. A special team will have clearance to process and track your data. We will limit who is allowed to see information that could directly identy you, like your name or social security number. In the unlikely event of a data breach, we will notify you. You are our partner, and your privacy will always be our top priority.”

The process is thorough, easy to understand, and assures that those who actually sign up know exactly what’s expected from them, what will be done to protect them, and that they may still have some risk.

Why can’t we expect that all IoT product manufacturers will give us a streamlined version of the same process? 


I will be developing consulting services to advise companies that want to develop common-sense, effective, easy-to-implement IoT privacy and security measures. Write me if you’d like to know more.

http://www.stephensonstrategies.com/">Stephenson blogs on Internet of Things Internet of Things strategy, breakthroughs and management