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.

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.

 

Great Podcast Discussion of #IoT Strategy With Old Friend Jason Daniels

Right after I submitted my final manuscript for The Future is Smart I had a chance to spend an hour with old friend Jason Daniels (we collaborated on a series of “21st Century Homeland Security Tips You Won’t Hear From Officials” videos back when I was a homeland security theorist) on his “Studio @ 50 Oliver” podcast.

We covered just about every topic I hit in the book, with a heavy emphasis on the attitude shifts (“IoT Essential Truths” needed to really capitalize on the IoT and the bleeding-edge concept I introduce at the end of the book, the “Circular Corporation,” with departments and individuals (even including your supply chain, distribution network and customers, if you choose) in a continuous, circular management style revolving around a shared real-time IoT hub.  Hope you’ll enjoy it!

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IoT Intangibles: Increased Customer Loyalty

There are so many direct, quantifiable benefits of the IoT, such as increased quality (that 99.9988% quality rate at Siemens’s Amberg plant!) and precision, that we may forget there are also potential intangible benefits.

Most important of those is customer loyalty, brought about by dramatic shifts both in product designs and how they are marketed.

Much of this results from the IoT lifting the veil of Collective Blindness to which I’ve referred before: in particular, our prior inability to document how products were actually used once they left the loading dock. As I’ve speculated, that probably meant that manufacturers got deceptive information about how customers actually used products and their degree of satisfaction. The difficulty of getting feedback logically meant that those who most liked and most hated a product were over-represented: those who kinda liked it weren’t sufficiently motivated to take the extra steps to be heard.

Now, by contrast, product designers, marketers, and maintenance staffs can share (that critical verb from my Circular Company vision!) real-time data about how a product is actually operating in the field, often from a “digital twin” they can access right at their desks.

Why’s that important?

It can give them easy insights (especially if those different departments do access and discuss the data at the same time, each offering its own unique perspectives, on issues that will build customer loyalty:

  • what new features can we add that will keep them happy?
  • can we offer upgrades such as new operating software (such as the Tesla software that was automatically installed in every single car and avoided a recall) that will provide better customer experiences and keep the product fresh?
  • what possible maintenance problems can we spot in their earliest stages, so we can put “predictive maintenance” services into play at minimal cost and bother to the customer?

I got interested in this issue of product design and customer loyalty while consulting for IBM in the 9o’s, when it introduced the IBM PS 2E (for Energy & Environmental), a CES best-of-show winner in part because of its snap-together modular design. While today’s thin-profile-at-all-costs PC and laptop designs have made user-friendly upgrades a distant memory, one of the things that appealed to me about this design was the realization that if you could keep users satisfied that they were on top of  new developments by incremental substitution of new modules, they’d be more loyal and less likely to explore other providers.

In the same vein, as GE has found, the rapid feedback can dramatically speed upgrades and new features. That’s important for loyalty: if you maintain a continuing interaction with the customer and anticipate their demands for new features, they’ll have less reason to go on the open market and evaluate all of your competitors’ products when they do want to move up.

 

Equally important for customer loyalty is the new marketing options that the continuous flow of real-time operating data offer you. For a growing number of companies, that means they’re no longer selling products, but leasing them, with the price based on actual customer usage: if it ain’t bein’ used, it ain’t costing them anything and it ain’t bringing you any revenue!

Examples include:

  • jet turbines which, because of the real-time data flow, can be marketed on the basis of thrust generated: if it’s sitting on the ground, the leasee doesn’t pay.  The same real-time data flow allows the manufacturer to schedule predictive maintenance at the earliest sign of a problem, reducing both its cost and the impact on the customer.
  • Siemens’s Mobility Services, which add in features such as 3-D manufactured spare parts that speed maintenance and reduced costs, keeping the trains running.
  • Philips’s lighting services, which are billed on the basis of use, not sold.
  • SAP’s prototype smart vending machine, which (if you opt in) may offer you a special discount based on your past purchasing habits.

At its most extreme is Caterpillar’s Reman process, where the company takes back and remanufactures old products, giving them a new life — and creating new revenues — when competitors’ products are in the landfill.

Loyalty can also be a benefit of IoT strategies for manufacturers’ own operations as well. Remember that the technological obstacles to instant sharing of real-time data have been eliminted for the supply chain as well. If you choose to share it, your resupply programs can also be automatically triggered on a M2M basis, giving an inherent advantage to the domestic supplier who can get the needed part there in a few hours, versua the low-cost supplier abroad who may take weeks to reach your loading dock.

It may be harder to quantify than quality improvements or streamlined production through the IoT, but that doesn’t mean that dependable revenue streams from loyal customers aren’t an important potential benefit as well.

Live Blogging Gartner ITxpo Barcelona!

After a harrowing trip via Air France (#neveragain) I’m in lovely Barcelona, live-blogging Gartner ITxpo courtesy of Siemens — but they aren’t dictating my editorial judgment.

Keynoter is Peter Sondergaard, Sr. VP, Gartner Research:

  • start with high-scale traditional IT structures, but with new emphasis on cloud, etc. IT system now partially inside your org. and part outside.  We are half-way through transition to cloud: half of sales support now through cloud. More financial, HR & other functions. General trend toward cloud, but still some internal processes as necessary. Must clean up traditional inside processes.
    • “Ecosystems are the next evolution of Digital”
    • Must learn to measure your investments in customer experience.
    • Starting to explore VR & AR (personal shout out to PTC & clients such as Caterpillar!!)
    • must understand customer’s intent through advanced algorithms.  Create solutions to problems they don’t even know they have!
  • next domain of new platform: Things:
    • build strategies with two lenses: consumer preferences, AND the enterprise IoT lens.
    • leverage exponential growth in connected things
    • 27445 exabytes of data by 2020!
    • can’t just bolt on new systems on old ones: must rework existing systems to include devices — processes, workflow, much harder (i.e., my circular company paradigm).
  • intelligence: how your systems learn and decide independently
    • algorithms– algorithmic intelligence — drives decisions
    • now, AI, driven by machine learning. Machines learn from experience.
    • information is new code base
    • we will employ people to train things to learn from experience through neural networks
  • ecosystems
    • linear value supply chains transformed to ecosystems through electronic interchange.
    • others can build experiences, etc. that you haven’t thought out through APIs  — my “share data” Essential Truth. APIs implement business policies in the digital world.c
  • customers
    • customer driven

Where to start?

  • 70% of IoT implementation is through new organization within companies!

Now other Gartner analysts chime in:

  • insurance: engage your customers.
  • smart gov: must interact with those who implement. Must re-imaging public involvement sense/engage/interact
  • case study: Deakin University in Australia: digital platforms to enhance student experience.
  • case study: Trenitalia mass transit system switching to predictive maintenance! Huge cost savings. “Experience hands & beginners mind at work” — love that slogan!!!! “Listen to the train instead of scheduling maintenance”
  • blockchain: ecosystem, brilliant in simplicity. All can see transaction but no one can invade privacy. Use to solve many problems: data provenance, land registry, public infrastucture, AI.
  • Woo: use this to TRANSFORM THE WORLD!!!
  • ratz — I was preoccupied at time, they talked about a new mobility system for seniors — re my SmartAging paradigm!!
  • paradigm shift — partnering with competitors (much of what I wrote about in DataDynamite: share data, don’t hoard it!)  Think about Apple & Google driving car companies’ interfaces. “Do you join hands with digital giants or join hands with them?”).
  • ooh, love the digital assistant correcting his presentation. I can only dream of a future where there are millions added to grammar police!

 

 

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Circular Company: Will Internet of Things Spark Management Revolution?

Could the IoT’s most profound impact be on management and corporate organization, not just cool devices?

I’ve written before about my still-being-refined vision of the IoT — because it (for the first time!) allows everyone who needs instant access to real-time data to do their jobs and make better decisions to share that data instantly —  as the impetus for a management revolution.

My thoughts were provoked by Heppelmann & Porter’s observation that:

“For companies grappling with the transition (to the IoT), organizational issues are now center stage — and there is no playbook. We are just beginning the process of rewriting the organization chart that has been in place for decades.”

If I’m right, the IoT could let us switch from the linear and hierarchical forms that made sense in an era of serious limits to intelligence about things and how they were working at thaFor companies grappling with the transition, organizational issues are now center stage—and there is no playbook. We are just beginning the process of rewriting the organization chart that has been in place for decades.t moment, to circular forms that instead eliminate information “silos” and instead give are circular, with IoT data as the hub. 

This article expands on that vision. I’ve tried mightily to get management journals to publish it. Several of the most prestigious have given it a serious look but ultimately passed on it. That may be because it’s crazy, but I believe it is feasible today, and can lead to higher profits, lower operating costs, empowering our entire workforces, and, oh yeah, saving the planet.

Audacious, but, IMHO, valid.  Please feel free to share this, to comment on it, and, if you think it has merit, build on it.

Thanks,

W. David Stephenson


The IoT Allows a Radical, Profitable Transformation to Circular Company Structure

 

by

W. David Stephenson

Precision assembly lines and thermostats you can adjust while away from home are obvious benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT), but it might also trigger a far more sweeping change: swapping outmoded hierarchical and linear organizational forms for new circular ones.

New org charts will be dramatically different because of an important aspect of the IoT overlooked in the understandable fascination with cool devices. The IoT’s most transformational aspect is that, for the first time,

everyone who needs real-time data to do their jobs better or
make better decisions can instantly 
share it.

That changes everything.

Linear and hierarchical organizational structures were coping mechanisms for the severe limits gathering and sharing data in the past. It made sense then for management, on a top-down basis, to determine which departments got which data, and when.

The Internet of Things changes all of that because of huge volumes of real-time data), plus modern communications tools so all who need the data can share it instantly. 

This will allow a radical change in corporate structure and functions from hierarchy: make it cyclical, with real-time IoT data as the hub around which the organization revolves and makes decisions.

Perhaps the closest existing model is W.L. Gore & Associates. The company has always been organized on a “lattice” model, with “no traditional organizational charts, no chains of command, nor predetermined channels of communication.”  Instead, they use cross-disciplinary teams including all functions, communicating directly with each other. Teams self-0rganize and most leaders emerge spontaneously.

As Deloitte’s Cathy Benko and Molly Anderson wrote, “Continuing to invest in the future using yesteryear’s industrial blueprint is futile. The lattice redefines workplace suppositions, providing a framework for organizing and advancing a company’s existing incremental efforts into a comprehensive, strategic response to the changing world of work.”  Add in the circular form’s real-time data hub, and the benefits are even greater, because everyone on these self-organizing teams works from the same data, at the same time.

You can begin to build such a cyclical company with several incremental IoT-based steps.

One of the most promising is making the product design process cyclical. Designers used to work in a vacuum: no one really knew how the products functioned in the field, so it was hard to target upgrades and improvements. Now, GE has found it can radically alter not only the upgrade process, but also the initial design as well:

“G.E. is adopting practices like releasing stripped-down products quickly, monitoring usage and rapidly changing designs depending on how things are used by customers. ‘We’re getting these offerings done in three, six, nine months,’ (Vice-President of Global Software William Ruh said). ‘It used to take three years.’”

New IoT and data-analytics tools are coming on the market that could facilitate such a shift. GE’s new tool, “Digital Twins,” creates a wire-frame replica of a product in the field (or, for that matter, a human body!) back at the company. Coupled with real-time data on its status, it lets everyone who might need to analyze a product’s real-time status (product designers, maintenance staff, and marketers, for example) to do so simultaneously.

The second step toward a cyclical organization is breaking down information silos.

Since almost every department has some role in creation and sales of every product, doesn’t it make sense to bring them together around a common set of data, to explore how that data could trigger coordinated actions by several departments? 

Collaborative big-data analysis tools such as GE’s Predix, SAP’s HANA, and Tableau facilitate the kind of joint scrutiny and “what-if” discussions of real-time data that can make circular teamwork based on IoT-data sharing really achieve its full potential.

The benefits are even greater when you choose to really think in circular terms, sharing instant access to that real-time data not only companywide, but also with external partners, such as your supply chain and distribution network – and even customers – not just giving them some access later on a linear basis.  For example, SAP has created an IoT-enabled vending machine. If a customer opts in, s/he is greeted by name, and may be offered “your regular combination” based on past purchases, and/or a real-time discount. That alone would be neat from a marketing standpoint, but SAP also opened the resulting data to others, resulting in important logistics improvements. Real-time machine-to-machine (M2M) data about sales at the new vending machines automatically reroute resupply trucks to those machines currently experiencing the highest sales. 

With the IoT, sharing data can make your own product or service more valuable. With the Apple HomeKit, you can say “Siri, it’s time for bed,” and the Hue lights dim, Schlage lock closes, and Ecobee thermostat turns down. By sharing real-time IoT data, each of these companies’ devices become more valuable in combinations than they are by themselves.

Hierarchical and linear management is outmoded in the era of real-time data from smart devices. It is time to begin to replace it with a dynamic, circular model with IoT data as its hub.

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Amazon Leads IoT With Comprehensive Services, Platform & Devices!

Several months ago I predicted that Amazon’s Echo might become the IoT’s killer device, primarily because it is voice activated. It appears that prediction is coming true, which should give the entire consumer IoT a boost because Amazon is also providing a soup-to-nuts approach of devices, platform, and storage meeting a wide range of IoT needs, which puts a real emphasis on customer ease of use.

 Amazon Flywheel

Amazon Flywheel

Even more exciting from my perspective, is that part of that success may be due to something I was unaware of that fits beautifully with my “circular enterprise ” vision of the IoT: Jeff Bezos’ back-of-the-envelope sketch when he founded the behemoth, of what he called the “Amazon Flywheel,” It’s as good an illustration as I can think of regarding my vision of circular organizations and strategy — not to mention their profitability!

Even the WSJ got on board with an article about Amazon in regard to the IoT, although it focused solely on Echo and its voice app, Alexa, and ignored the all-important mechanics that it also provides.

 Amazon IoT Button

Amazon IoT Button

The latest step in fleshing out the ecosystem was the announcement earlier this month of the AWS IoT Button, modeled on its highly successful DASH button, which allows ordering more than 100 different consumer products from Amazon by simply pressing the button (the “button” is also now also available in virtual form as a software service, so that a number of products, such as a Whirlpool smart washing machine, will determine that the owner is running low on detergent, and automatically send an alert to her phone. A simple touch on the phone triggers a refill order from Amazon). The 1st edition IoT button sold out instantly!

It joins a comprehensive, and growing, package of IoT devices and services from Amazon that I suspect will quickly make it the platform of choice for the consumer IoT:

You get the idea: this is a conplete solution, from platform to cloud storage to devices to highly-personal (voice) interface.


 

And there’s that matter of the Amazon Flywheel that I mentioned previously.  I came across it in researching this post, in a blog post by John Rossman in which he referred to the Flywheel as “a long-tested systems dynamic view of Amazon’s core retail and marketplace business” (music to my ears: it was exposure to Jay Forrester & Peter Senge’s work on systems dynamics that first got me interested in cyclical processes, back in the late ’80s). He explains how this continuous loop leads to dynamic growth, especially in Amazon’s infrastructure offerings:

“When thinking through an IoT solution, what is most obvious is the end device.  But this is the classic “tip of the iceberg” in creating an end-to-end solutions.  The IoT Value Chain is defined by devices, connectivity, big data, algorithms, actions, and connection to the rest of the enterprise.  As more and more IoT Devices get introduced, a greater amount of data (both big and small) is generated. This data, once integrated with algorithms create a greater overall customer IoT impact generating more demand for more devices. All of these devices and services can be hosted on AWS and utilize their infrastructure capabilities leading to greater growth of the infrastructure. At this point, the loop looks familiar: infrastructure growth leads to lower costs, which means more services and companies rely on the infrastructure locking into a cycle of higher customer impact.  Amazon Web Services has several existing IoT enabling products include AWS Redshift, AWS Kinesis, AWS Machine Learning and recent acquisition of 2lemetry show that the big bet for Amazon is not in creating devices for its retail business, but in providing cloud infrastructure and software to thousands of companies needing to build IoT devices and capabilities.  This is the AWS IoT flywheel and the real business in IoT for Amazon.”

Yeah, but the bucks that it will get from Dash orders and from Echo ain’t shabby either. Keep up that cyclical thinking, Mr. Bezos!

 

PS: this also makes me more and more confident that Echo and Alexis can be the key to the robust “SmartAging” approach that I visualize because its use of voice will help seniors, especially the tech-averse, manage their health AND their homes and allow them to age in place healthily! Gonna have to get me some partners to go after Alexa Fund backing…

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Live Blogging from SAP’s SCM CRM IoT 2016

I’m back in Sodom and Gomorrah in the desert, AKA Las Vegas, to speak at another SAP IoT conference: SCM CRM IoT 2016, and to live blog again!

Keynoters: Hans Thalbauer, sr. vp of extended supply chain solutions at SAP, and Dr. Volker G. Hildebrand, global vp or customer engagement & commerce for SAP Hybris:
Hildebrand:

  • theme: move beyond traditional CRM: look at entire customer journey
  • you have to meet customer expectations for convenience, relevance, reliability, and in real-time.
  • real lesson from Uber: customers upend markets, not companies; carry power of internet in their pocket; if you’re fighting alone, you have no chance of success;
  • when London cabbies went on strike, Uber membership went up 850% in 3 days.
  • “74% of execs. believe digital transformation is improving value for customers”
  • must thinking beyond CRM: 2 of 3 companies don’t think their CRM doesn’t support their future needs for customer engagement.
  • blend marketing & commerce.
  • personalization is key to digital commerce.
  • beyond service: customer served before, during & after buy; flawless field service. 53% abandon online purchase if they don’t be quick answers to questions.
  • why no app from cable provider allowing you to get assistance Uber-style? Instead, hold on phone.
  • One-to-one future is here.
  • Omnichannel selling
  • By 2020: 1 million fewer B2B sales reps (@Forrester)
  • EY: enabled collaboration with 15,000 client partners
  • “Engage your customers like never before:” commerce, marketing, service & sales.

Bob Porter, Pregis (protective packaging):

  • liked ease of use with Hybris (vs. Salesforce)

Thalbauer (digital transformation of supply chain):

  • end-consumer driven economy
  • very related to IoT
  • tech adoption accelerating
  • biz model transformation
  • instant notification if the equipment malfunctions
  • change of business transformation
  • disruption in every aspect of business:
    • customer-centric (demand sensing, omni-channel sales, same-day delivery)
    • individualized products (configured products, digitalized inventory, lot size of one)
    • resource scarcity (talent, sustainability, natural resources)
    • sharing economy (social networks, business networks, asset networks)
  • sweet: combo of 3-D printing at warehouse & Uber-based model for final delivery.
  • extended supply chain demo: sweet (literally): 3-D printing of chocolates at high-end stores! — wonderful example of IoT data-centric enterprise
  • SAP increasing pace of innovation
    • fastest-growing planning solution in history
    • only live logistics platform in the market
    • product innovation platform re-defined
    • demand-driven manufacturing
    • digital assets.

Next up: Sacha Westermann, Port of Hamburg, on how it uses IoT to streamline operations, improve efficiency & reduce accidents through “smartPORT”:

  • it’s very big (largest port in Germany), and very complex! Ships, rail (largest rail hub in Europe), trucking. 24/7.
  • big emphasis on environment: need to reduce emissions, improve sustainability.
  • can’t expand area, but must be able to handle more volume.
  • key factor is connectivity between all parties.
  • smartPORT includes energy & logistics.
  • smart maintenance: use mobile to call up SAP order & create messages, take photos. Example of malfunction with a drawbridge. Technician got new button from stock, installed it, customers didn’t even know there was a problem.
  • port monitor: digital map with all info to operate the harbor. Mobile version on iPad.
  • SmartSwitch for rail: sensors on the switches to measure conditions. Automated data flow to maintenance company.
  • dynamic info on traffic volumes: combines all real-time data on traffic. Detects available parking spaces. Created “PrePort Parking” as holding area for trucks that are early or late. Trucks park bumper-to-bumper for maximum efficiency.
  • special traffic lights: cycle changes based on real-time traffic flow. Warning messages if pedestrians cross.
  • smartROAD: smart sensing of the bridge-structural load — identifies interdependencies and to do predictive maintenance.
  • Take aways:
    • good application requires lot of data
    • must share data
    • data privacy critical for confidence
    • everyone gets just info they need
    • more participants, higher the benefit for each
    • open interfaces basic
    • application must be self-explanatory

Next up: me!, on 4 Essential Truths of IoT & how that translates into strategy.


 

Mike Lackey, IoT Extended Supply Chain, SAP explaining their IoT strategy & direction, with emphasis on “driving customer value”:

  • he’s using universe of 75 billion connected devices by 2022.
  • case study: STILL, the smart lift truck from Germany. Forklift sold as service, based on weight of materials carried. They will communicate among themselves, M2M.
  • “It is not about Things, it is about what the Things can do to radically transform business processes!”
  • oil & gas: reducing spills. They worked with the company that made the platform that failed in Deep Horizon — hadn’t been maintained in years.
  • Burbury: want to know exactly what you looked at, share the info among their stores. Creepy: invasion of privacy??
  • UnderArmour: why do you have to wear a band — build sensors right into clothes.
  • Hagleitner (I reported about them at last SAP event) provides supplies for corporate washrooms, etc. Paradigm shift: sensors let them know which dispensers need new materials. “big washroom data
  • applications: drive adoption with a few killer applications. Differentiate with “Thing to Outcome”
  • cloud: leading cloud experience for customers and partners at lowest TCO
  • platform: open big data platform. high-value services for SAP, customer & partner
  • Kaeser Compressors also made paradigm shift: no longer sell air compressors, but air — must guarantee it works constantly. Million data points per compressor daily. Differentiates them from competitors.
  • one tractor company now can recommend to farmers what they should plant based on data from sensors on the plows.
  • Asset Intelligence Network: great example of data sharing for mutual advantage. To be released soon.
  • Enables connected driving experience.
  • SAP IoT Starter Kit can get you started.
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Digital Twins: the Ultimate in Internet of Things Real-Time Monitoring

Get ready for the age when every product will have a “digital twin” back at the manufacturer, a perfect copy of not just the product as it left the factory floor, but as it is functioning in the field right now. That will be yet another IoT game-changer in terms of my 4th IoT Essential Truth, “rethink products.”

Oh, and did I forget to mention that we’ll each have a personal body twin from birth, to improve our health?

For the first time we’ll really understand products, how they work, what’s needed to improve them, and even how they may be tweaked once they’re thousands of miles from the factory, to add new features, fix problems, and/or optimize efficiency.

Key to circular organizations

Even better, the twin can play a critical role in accomplishing my vision of new circular organizations (replacing obsolete hierarchies and linear processes), in which all relevant departments and functions (and even supply chain members, distribution networks and customers, where relevant) form a continuous circle with real-time IoT data as the hub).  Think of the twin as one of those manifestations of the real-time data to which all departments will have simultaneous access.

GE Digital Twin visualization

               GE Digital Twin visualization

I’ve often remarked how incredible it was that companies (especially manufacturers) were able to function as well as they did and produce products as functional as they were despite the inability to peek inside them and really understand their operations and/or problems. Bravo, industrial pioneers!

However, that’s no longer good enough, and that’s where digital twins come in.  In a WSJ blog post this week, General Electric’s William Ruh, my fav IoT visionary/pragmatist, talked about how the company, as part of its “Industrial Internet” transformation, is making digital twins a key tool:

“Every product out there will have one, and there will be an ability to connect a system, or systems of digital twins, easily. The digital twin is a model of an asset, a product such as a jet engine or a model of the blades in a jet engine. Sensors on those blades pull the data off and feed them into the digital twin. The digital twin is kept current with the data that is run off the sensors. It is in sync with the reality of the blade. Now we can ask what is the best time to change the blade, how the blade performs, options to get greater efficiency.”

Proof of the pudding?

Ruh says they’ve created a wind turbine and twin they call the “Digital Windfarm,” which generates 20% more electricity than a nearby conventional turbine.

PTC is also working on digital twins. According to the company’s Executive VP for Digital Twin, Mike Campbell,:  “It’s a model that uniquely represents a physical occurrence in the real world. This one-­to­one mapping is important. You create a relationship between the digital data and a unique product occurrence from a variety of sources: sensors, enterprise data on how it was made, what its configuration was, its geometry, how it is being used, and how it is being serviced.”

Predix

The key to digital twins is GE’s “Predix” predictive analytics software platform, which the company is extending across its entire product line. As always, the key is a constant stream of real-time data:

“weather, component messages, service reports, performance of similar models in GE’s fleets—a predictive model is built and the data collected is turned into actionable insights. This model can perform advanced planning, such as forecasting a ‘plan of the day’ for turbine operation, determining a highly efficient strategy to execute planned maintenance activities, and providing warnings about upcoming unplanned maintenance events, all of which ultimately generates more output and revenue for the customer.”

Digital doppelgängers

Here’s where the really sci-fi part kicks in: Ruh also predicts (Predix??, LOL) that GE’s medical division will soon create digital twins for you and me — at birth!

“I believe we will have a digital twin at birth, and it will take data off of the sensors everybody is running, and that digital twin will predict things for us about disease and cancer and other things. I believe we will end up with health care being the ultimate digital twin. Without it, I believe we will have data but with no outcome, or value.”

And, frankly, there’s also a spooky aspect to what GE’s doing, working with retailers to create psychographic models of customers based on their buying preferences. I’m dubious on that account: I do appreciate some suggestion about what might interest me, especially books, based on my past purchases. On the other hand, a couple of weeks I shopped for — but didn’t buy — biz cards online. Now, I get AdSense ads for these cards everywhere — even on this homepage (sorry for stuff that isn’t IoT, dear reader) Get over it, OK? Count me out when it get’s down to really granular psychographic profiles — too many risks with privacy and security.

I suspect digital twins will become a staple of the IoT, yielding critical real-time info on product status that will enable predictive maintenance and, as Ruh has written elsewhere, speeding the product upgrade process because, for the first time, designers will know exactly how the products are functioning in the field, as opposed to the total lack of information that used to be the norm. Stay tuned.

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Day 2, Live Blogging from SAP’s IoT2016 Internet of Things Event

I’m up first this morning, & hope to lift attendees’ vision of what can be achieved with the Internet of Things: sure, cool devices and greater efficiency are great, but there’s so much more: how about total transformation of businesses and the economy, to make them more creative, precise, and even environmentally sustainable?

I’ve just revised my 4 IoT Essential Truths, the heart of my presentation, bumping make privacy and security the highest priority from number 4 to number 1 because of the factors I cited last week. I’ll draw on my background in crisis management to explain to the engineers in attendance, who I’ve found have a problem with accepting fear because it isn’t fact-based, how losing public trust could kill the IoT Golden Goose.

I’ll go on to explain the three other Essential Truths:

  • Share Data (instead of hoarding it, as in the past)
  • Close the Loop (feed that data back so there are no loose ends, and devices become self-regulating
  • Rethink Products so they will contain sensors to feed back data about the products’ real-time status, and/or can now be marketed not as products that are simply sold, but services that both provide additional benefits to customers while also creating new revenue streams for the manufacturer.

I’ll stress that these aren’t just truisms, but really difficult paradigm shifts to accomplish. They’re worth it, however, because making these changes a reality will allow us to leave behind old hierarchical and linear organizational structures that made sense in an age of limited and hard-t0-share data. Instead, we can follow the lead of W.L. Gore and its cyclical “lattice management,” in which — for the first time — everyone can get the real-time data they need to do their jobs better and make better decisions. Equally important, everyone can share this data in real time, breaking down information silos and encouraging collaboration, both within a company and with its supply chain and distribution network — and even with customers.

Amen.


Back with Michael Lynch of SAP!

  • we can change the world and enhance our understanding greater than ever.
  • can help us solve global warming.
  • great case study on heavy truck predictive maintenance in GoldCorp Canadian gold mines.
  • IoT maturity curve:
  • Critical question: who are you in a connected future?  Can lead to re-imaginging your corporate role.
  • UnderArmour is now embedding monitors into clothing.
  • Tennant makes cleaning equipment. Big problem with lost machines, now can find them quickly.
  • Asset Intelligence Network — Facebook for heavy equipment — SAP will launch soon.
  • example of a tractor company that’s moving to a “solutions-based enterprise.” What is the smallest increment of what you do that you could charge customer. Like the turbine companies charging for thrust.

SAP strategy:

  • “Our solution strategy is to grow by IoT-enabling core industry, and providing next generation solutions for millions of human users, while expanding our platform market by adding devices.”
  • they have an amazing next-gen. digital platform. More data flow through there than Alibaba & Amazon!
  • CenterPoint Energy — correlating all sorts of data such as smart meter & weather. Better forecasting.
  • Doing a new home-based diabetes monitoring system with Roche.
  • Doing a lot of predictive maintenance.
  • Connected mining.
  • Building blocks:
    • Connect (SAP IoT Starter Kit)
    • Transform
    • Re-imagine

Ending the day with my presentation on first steps for companies to take in beginning an IoT strategy, with special emphasis on applying analytical tools such as HANA to your current operations, and building “precision operations” by giving everyone who needs it real-time data to improve their job performance and decision-making. Much of the presentation will focus on GE, with its “Brilliant Factories” initiative!

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