Live Blogging Gartner ITxpo Barcelona!

Posted on 7th November 2016 in circular company, collaboration, communication, data, design, Essential Truths, Internet of Things, M2M, management, manufacturing, marketing, paradigm shift, retail, strategy, supply chain

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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Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You: One of Largest Botnet Attacks Ever Due to Lax IoT Security

Posted on 19th October 2016 in data, Essential Truths, home automation, Homeland Security, Internet of Things, privacy, security, sensors, smart home

Don’t say I didn’t warn you about how privacy and security had to be THE highest priority for any IoT device.

On September 19th, Chris Rezendes and I were the guests on a Harvard Business Review webinar on IoT privacy and security. I once again was blunt that:

  • you can’t wait until you’ve designed your cool new IoT device before you begin to add in privacy and security protections. Start on Day 1!
  • sensors are particularly vulnerable, since they’re usually designed for minimum cost, installed, and forgotten.
  • as with the Target hack, hackers will try to exploit the least protected part of the system.
  • privacy and security protections must be iterative, because the threats are constantly changing.
  • responsible companies have as much to lose as the irresponsible, because the result of shortcomings could be held against the IoT in general.

The very next day, all hell broke loose. Hackers used the Mirai malware to launch one of the largest distributed denial-of-service attack ever, on security blogger Brian Krebs (BTW, the bad guys failed, because of valiant work by the good guys here in Cambridge, at Akamai!).

 

The threat was so bad that DHS’s National Cyber Awareness System sent out the first bulletin I ever remember getting from them dealing specifically with IoT devices. As it warned, “IoT devices are particularly susceptible to malware, so protecting these devices and connected hardware is critical to protect systems and networks.”  By way of further explanation, DHS showed how ridiculously simple the attacks were because of inadequate protection:

“The Mirai bot uses a short list of 62 common default usernames and passwords to scan for vulnerable devices. Because many IoT devices are unsecured or weakly secured, this short dictionary allows the bot to access hundreds of thousands of devices. The purported Mirai author claimed that over 380,000 IoT devices  (my emphasis) were enslaved by the Mirai malware in the attack on Krebs’ website.”

A later attack in France during September using Mirai resulted in the largest DDoS attack ever.

The IoT devices affected in the latest Mirai incidents were primarily home routers, network-enabled cameras, and digital video recorders. Mirai malware source code was published online at the end of September, opening the door to more widespread use of the code to create other DDoS attacks.

How’d they do it?

By a feature of the malware that detects and attacks consumer IoT devices that only have default, sometimes hardwired, passwords and usernames (or, as Dark Reading put it in an apocalyptic sub-head, “Mirai malware could signal the beginning of new trend in using Internet of Things devices as bots for DDoS attacks.”

To place the blame closer to home (well, more accurately, in the home!) you and I, if we bought cheap smart thermostats or baby monitors with minimal or no privacy protections and didn’t bother to set up custom passwords, may have unwittingly participated in the attack. Got your attention yet?

 

No responsible IoT inventor or company can deny it any longer: the entire industry is at risk unless corporate users and the general public can be confident that privacy and security are baked in and continuously upgraded. Please watch the HBR webinar if you haven’t already, and pledge to make IoT privacy and security Job #1!

 

PS: According to the DHS bulletin:

“In early October, Krebs on Security reported on a separate malware family responsible for other IoT botnet attacks. This other malware, whose source code is not yet public, is named Bashlite. This malware also infects systems through default usernames and passwords. Level 3 Communications, a security firm, indicated that the Bashlite botnet may have about one million (my emphasis) enslaved IoT devices.”

BTW: thanks for my friend Bob Weisberg for reminding me to give this situation its due!

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Circular Company: Will Internet of Things Spark Management Revolution?

Posted on 11th October 2016 in circular company, circular economy, collaboration, communication, data, design, environmental, Essential Truths, logistics, M2M, maintenance, management, manufacturing, marketing, open data, paradigm shift, retail, sensors, services, supply chain, transportation

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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Smart Infrastructure Logical Top Priority for IoT

Posted on 28th September 2016 in automotive, China, cities, data, design, energy, environmental, government, Internet of Things, logistics, M2M, open data, paradigm shift, sensors, smart cities, supply chain, transportation

The only issue Clinton and Trump can agree on is the need for massive improvements to the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, especially its roads and bridges. But, please, let’s make it more than concrete and steel.

Let’s make it smart, and let’s make it the top priority for the IoT because of the trickle-down effects it will have on everything else in our economy.

Global economist Jeffrey Sachs stated the case eloquently in a recent Boston Globe op-ed, “Sustainable infrastructure after the Automobile Age,” in which he argued that the infrastructure (including not only highways and bridges but also water systems, waste treatment, and the electric grid) shaped by the automotive age has run its course, and must be replaced by one “in line with new needs, especially climate safety, and new opportunities, especially ubiquitous online information and smart machines.”

I’m currently reading Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel’s The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, and the Future of Urban Life, which makes the same argument: “The answer to urban expansion and diffusion — and the host of social consequences that they bring — may be to optimize, rather than increase, transportation infrastructure.”

The IoT is perfectly suited to the needs of a new information-based infrastructure, especially one which must balance promoting the economy and mobility with drastic reductions in greenhouse gasses (transportation produces approximately a third of the U.S.’s  emissions). It can both improve maintenance (especially for bridges) through built-in sensors that constantly monitor conditions and can give advance warning in time to do less-costly and less-disruptive predictive maintenance, and reduce congestion by providing real-time information on current congestion so that real-time alterations to signals, etc., can be made rather than depending on outmoded fixed-interval stoplights, etc.

Sachs points out that infrastructure spending as a percentage of GDP has fallen since the Reagan years, and that it will require much more spending to bring it up to date.

A good place to look for a model is China.  The country already sports the largest concentration of M2M connections in the world: “74 million connections at the end of 2014, representing almost a third of the global base,” much of that in the form of smart bridges, smart rails, and smart grid, and critical because of the country’s rapid economic growth (Ratti cites a Beijing traffic jam that immobilized cars for an astounding 12 days!). Similarly, the government aims to have 95% of homes equipt with smart meters by next year.The country has used its investment in smart infrastructure to build its overall IoT industry’s ability to compete globally.

Sachs argues for a long-term smart infrastructure initiative:

“I propose that we envision the kind of built environment we want for the next 60 years. With a shared vision of America’s infrastructure goals, actually designing and building the new transport, energy, communications, and water systems will surely require at least a generation, just as the Interstate Highway System did a half-century ago.”

He says we need a plan based on three priorities to cope with our current national and global challenges:

“We should seek an infrastructure that abides by the triple bottom line of sustainable development. That is, the networks of roads, power, water, and communications should support economic prosperity, social fairness, and environmental sustainability. The triple bottom line will in turn push us to adopt three guiding principles.

First, the infrastructure should be “smart,” deploying state-of-the-art information and communications technologies and new nanotechnologies to achieve a high efficiency of resource use.

Second, the infrastructure should be shared and accessible to all, whether as shared vehicles, open-access broadband in public areas, or shared green spaces in cities.

Third, transport infrastructure should promote public health and environmental safety. The new transport systems should not only shift to electrical vehicles and other zero-emission vehicles, but should also promote much more walking, bicycling, and public transport use. Power generation should shift decisively to zero-carbon primary energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power. The built environment should be resilient to rising ocean levels, higher temperatures, more intense heat waves, and more extreme storms.”

The IoT, particularly because of its ability to let us share real-time data that in turn can regulate the infrastructure, is ideally suited to this challenge. It’s time for Congress to not only spend on infrastructure but to do so wisely.

The result will be not only the infrastructure we need, but also a more robust IoT industry in general.

 

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Concurrent Engineering: Great Tool to Make IoT “Circular Company” Reality!

Posted on 22nd August 2016 in circular company, collaboration, data, design, Essential Truths, Internet of Things, management, manufacturing, paradigm shift

Simultaneously sharing real-time data and collaborating (vs. linear methods where departments work in isolation from each other and sequentially) is a major theme of my “Circular Company” vision.

At the PTC ThingWorx expo in June one of the themes was “concurrent engineering“), which could be a major tool in making the circular company a reality.  The company’s Creo Advanced Assembly Extension  lets the the lead designer plan the assembly’s “skeleton” to give all the subassembly teams a common work basis and to include critical design info in the subassemblies. This lets each team work in parallel. If the lead engineer modifies the primary design, all the subassemblies will modify automatically. The process transfers seamlessly to the assembly line.

According to Wikipedia, the concept also fits nicely with the “circular economy” concept that’s gaining strength, by considering factors such as end-of-life disposal and recycling,  which is a great bonus of the “circular company”:

“.. part of the design process is to ensure that the entire product’s life cycle is taken into consideration. This includes establishing user requirements, propagating early conceptual designs, running computational models, creating physical prototypes and eventually manufacturing the product. Included in the process is taking into full account funding, work force capability and time. A study in 2006 claimed that a correct implementation of the concurrent design process can save a significant amount of money, and that organizations have been moving to concurrent design for this reason.[3] It is also highly compatible with systems thinking [which, BTW, is what originally introduced me to this concept, many years ago, through the writings of Peter Senge and Jay Forrester, who, BTW, is still kickin’ at 97!] and green engineering.”

Come on, gang: hierarchy and linear processes are soooo 20th century. Get with the program.

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

Posted on 27th June 2016 in agriculture, cities, collaboration, data, energy, environmental, EU, government, Internet of Things, M2M, management, manufacturing, paradigm shift, sensors, smart cities, strategy, US government

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

Posted on 21st June 2016 in automotive, data, design, Internet of Things, maintenance, manufacturing, paradigm shift, sensors

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

Posted on 7th June 2016 in data, design, Internet of Things, M2M, maintenance, manufacturing, marketing, strategy

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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Industry Week Survey: Most Manufacturers Don’t Get IoT

Posted on 25th May 2016 in data, Internet of Things, M2M, management, manufacturing, sensors, strategy

A new Industry Week survey shows that most manufacturers are, at best, just testing the IoT waters, and few have made the management changes necessary that show they understand the IoT’s revolutionary potential to change every aspect of their products, manufacturing, and even their management.

The Internet of Things: Finding the Path to ValueThe survey, “The Internet of Things: Finding the Path to Value,” (underwritten by SAS) was conducted late last year.  478 companies completed it.  The survey’s major finding was that:

“Despite the fact that they’re already collecting such (i.e., IoT) data, and two- thirds believe the Internet of Things technology will be critical to their future success, only one third of manufacturers report that they have a specific IoT technology strategy.” (my emphasis)

One finding was particularly damning, because it shows senior management really doesn’t get the full value of IoT data and how it must radically alter their decision making:

“… two out of three say they rely more on management experience [than the IoT] when addressing key business issues.”

On the other hand, 28% said they think they’re outpacing their competitors in use of the IoT. Pardon my skepticism..

Here’s the finding that clearly indicated to me that these executives don’t get it that the vast amounts of data yielded by the IoT requires new analytical tools (HANA and its ilk) and new skill sets (i.e., data scientists): ”

“It should come as no surprise … that well over half (57%) of manufacturers report that they are using spreadsheets to analyze sensor data.” (my emphasis)

Really?? Those guys gotta download the Managing the Internet of Things Revolution e-guide I wrote for SAP, which explained that the way to ease your way into the IoT is to begin by acquiring data mining and visualization tools and beefing up your cloud storage, which will benefit you with your current operations, as well as building the data analysis skills such as predictive analytics — and attitudes — necessary to capitalize on the IoT.  If you’re analyzing sensor data with spreadsheets, your priorities are totally out of wack…

On the positive side, 45% are integrating and supplementing IoT data regarding product quality, and 43% integrating production data.

I see little indication from the findings that most companies (a few, such as GE and Siemens, excepted) are fully integrating the IoT into day-to-day operations, resulting in what I’ve called “precision manufacturing.”

Long way to go, folks, long way to go…

 

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Zoe: perhaps even better than Echo as IoT killer device?

Posted on 2nd May 2016 in aging, data, design, health, home automation, Internet of Things, m-health, privacy, Quantified Self, security, seniors, smart home, SmartAging

Zoe smart home hub

I’ve raved before about Echo, Amazon’s increasingly versatile smart home hub, primarily because it is voice activated, and thus can be used by anyone, regardless of tech smarts — or whether their hands are full of stuff.  As I’ve mentioned, voice control makes it a natural for my “SmartAging” concept to help improve seniors’ health and allow them to manage their homes, because you don’t have to understand the underlying technology — just talk.

Now there’s a challenger on the horizon: start-up Zoe, which offers many of Echo’s uses, but with an important difference that’s increasingly relevant as IoT security and privacy challenges mount: your data will remain securely in your home. Or, as their slogan goes:

“So far, smart home meant high convenience, no privacy, or privacy, but no fun. We are empowering you to have both.”

You can still get in on Zoe’s Indegogo campaign with a $249 contribution, which will get you a hub and an extra “voice drop” to use in another room, or the base level, $169 for a single room. Looks kinda cool to me, especially with the easily changed “Art Covers” and backlight coloring (the Che Guevera one looks appropriate for a revolutionary product) …  The product will ship in late 2016.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Echo & will be getting mine soon, but there is that creepy factor given government officials’ fascination with the potential of tapping into smart home data as part of their surveillance. Remember what US Director of Intelligence James Clapper said, ““In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.” Consider then, that Echo sits there on your kitchen counter, potentially hacked and then hoovering up all of your kitchen chit-chat to relay directly to the spooks.  Wouldn’t you rather that data remained totally under your control?

In addition to storing the data on site rather than in the cloud, Zoe also touts that it has advanced voice-recognition so it can learn IFTTT-style “recipes,” or be operated by apps. She comes with 1,500 built-in voice commands, or, if you stump her, (and only if you choose to, preserving that in-house-only option) web-based Advanced Voice Recognition steps in, with a cloud-based voice recognition system. Her recognition capabilities will grow over time.. Zoe will work with WiFi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, and other standards.

The company will ship the developers’ kit in six months. It will be open source.

Not being cloud based will mean it loses to Echo on two important counts. For many people, the ability to order things from Amazon simply by speaking may be more important than security concerns,. Also, I notice it doesn’t mention any speakers, so it may be lacking the ability to also serve as a music source (obviously it wouldn’t work with Amazon Music or Apple Music if it isn’t cloud-connected, but it would at least be nice to be able to use it to play your own collection — advantage to Echo on that one.

At least this means there’s competition in the field (and, BTW, I’d love to see Apple swoop in and make THE voice-activated device!)

BTW: Thanks to good buddy Bob Weisberg for the tip about Zoe! Follow him!

 

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