No more excuses for companies to delay IoT strategies!

Posted on 26th February 2019 in 3-D printing, China, data, Internet of Things, M2M, maintenance, manufacturing, strategy
Just came across a report from the World Economic Forum late last year that undermines management’s defense that ignorance is bliss when it comes to the IoT.
Titled “Europe, Asia Lead the Way to the Factories of the Future,” (um, aside to US manufacturers: see any cause for concern in this headline?) it was the result of a long process by the WEF to identify “manufacturing lighthouses” addressing issues confronting manufacturers worldwide regarding investments in advanced technologies identified with Industry 4.0.
The 9 plants, culled from an initial list of 1,000 plus, enjoy 20-50% higher performance. Only one —  3D parts printer Radius — is from the US.
Earlier WEF research determined “that over 70% of businesses investing in technologies such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence or 3D printing are not able to take the projects beyond pilot phase.” To overcome that lapse, the participating companies have agreed to share their knowledge.
Here’s the risk to those who don’t take them up on the offer, according to Enno de Boer, McKinsey partner and global head of manufacturing at McKinsey & Company, which worked with the WEF on the project:
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is real. Workers and management equally get augmented with technology. These pioneers have created factories that have 20-50% higher performance and create a competitive edge.  …. They have agile teams with domain, analytics, IoT and software development expertise that are rapidly innovating on the shop floor. They have deployed a common data/IoT platform and have up to 15 use cases in action. They are thinking ‘scale’, acting ‘agile’ and resetting the benchmark.” (my emphasis)
Among the nine, several examples stood out:
  • Bayer Biopharmaceutical (Garbagnate, Italy) capitalizes on the data it generates to cut maintenance costs 25% and increase operational efficiency.
  • Haier (Qingdao, China) uses AI to create a “user-centric mass customization model” with electronic products made on-demand. “Maintenance needs are predicted before incurring downtime via a remote AI supported, central intelligent service cloud platform.”
  • Phoenix Contact (Bad Pyrmont and Blomberg, Germany) cuts production time 30% by creating digital twins of each customer’s specs.
  • Siemens Industrial Automation Products (Chengdu, China) Why am I not surprised? — I suspect this is Siemens’ China analog of its Amburg “Factory of the Future” that I wrote about at length in The Future Is Smart:  ‘Fully integrated technology platform for flexible production’ -Delivers ability to take customer orders and immediately allocate resources and schedule production time on a single, automated platform leading to 100% quality compliance and 100% traceability, while ensuring security and agility.”
However, I was particularly intrigued by the choice of Johnson & Johnson’s Depuy Synthes factory in Cork, Ireland, because it used the IoT to “make old machines talk to one another.”
Frequently companies reluctant to invest in the IoT cite their massive investments in legacy production equipment that doesn’t have M2M capacity as a barrier.  However, J & J was able to cut operating cuts by 10% and reduce downtime by 5%.  As a WEF spokesman told The Irish Times,
“The fourth industrial revolution doesn’t always mean newer, more expensive machines. Rather it can mean better communicating with and responding to the technologies you do have… By implementing simple internet-of-things devices across a range of machines that were never intended to ‘talk’ to each other, the Depuy Synthes factory created real-time digital twins of its factory equipment to monitor performance.”
Another of the nine, P & G’s Rakona plant in the Czech Republic, has also brought an existing plant up to date with the IoT. Built in 1875, it “can seamlessly change the product being manufactured with a push of a button, an innovation that reduced costs by 20% and upped output by a whopping 160%.”

Bottom line: it’s one thing for a brand-new plant in a brand new field such as the Radius 3D plant to profit from the IoT, but if an existing plant such as P & G Rakona’s one or one such as the J & J Depuy Synthes can add IoT capacity to existing “dumb” manufacturing equipment, you’re whistling in the dark if you don’t begin to create and execute an Industrial IoT strategy NOW.

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Previewing “The Future Is Smart”: Siemens Leads Way In IoT Transformation

Posted on 26th July 2018 in 3-D printing, Augmented Reality, data, design, Essential Truths, Internet of Things, M2M, maintenance, management, manufacturing, paradigm shift, sensors, strategy, transportation

Huzzah!

On August 7th, HarperCollins’ new Leadership imprint (formerly Amacom) will publish The Future Is Smart, my guide to IoT strategy for businesses and the general public.  BTW: write me if you’d like to arrange a speaking engagement/book signing event!

As part of the build-up to the release, here’s another excerpt from the book, drawn from Chapter 5: “Siemens and GE:Old War Horses Leading the IoT Revolution.” It zeroes in on these two industrial companies from the 19th (!!) century that are arguably among the top IoT companies in the world (although, sadly, GE’s transformation, which I’ll detail in the next excerpt, has not resulted — so far — in a return to its former profitability). I highlighted these two companies in part to give comfort to old-line manufacturers that have been reluctant to embrace the IoT, and in part to shame them: if they can do it, why can’t you?

Siemens is a particularly exciting example, applying IoT thinking and technology to gain a competitive edge in the railroad business, which it has been involved in since the 19th century, and because its Amberg “Factory of the Future” is the epitome of the benefits of applying the IoT to manufacturing,  The excerpt is long, but I think the details on Siemens’ IoT transformation will make it worthwhile reading.

 

For all their (referring to Siemens and GE) own distinctive products and services, there are startling parallels between the two that are relevant to this book, particularly for readers whose companies have been unaware of the IoT or are modestly testing the waters. Both Siemens and GE have fully committed to the IoT and are radically reinventing themselves, their products, and their services. 

At the same time, they are not abandoning the physical for the digital: they still make products such as trains (NB: since this book went to press, GE announced it will quit to locomotive business as it struggles to regain momentum) and large medical diagnostic devices that remain necessary in the new economy, and those devices (as well as the new software lines) are used by many other companies in their own manufacturing. Both companies aren’t just testing the IoT: they are on the bleeding edge of innovation in terms of both IoT technology and services.

Siemens and GE embody most of the marks of the IoT company outlined in the first chapter:

  • Unprecedented assembly-line precision and product quality
  • Drastically lower maintenance costs and product failure
  • Increased customer delight and loyalty
  • Improved decision-making
  • Creating new business models and revenue streams

And, while they haven’t formally addressed the sixth IoT hallmark, the circular management organization, both companies exhibit management characteristics consistent with it.

Bottom-line: if these two relics of the early Industrial Age can make the IoT transformation, why can’t you?

(Siemens’) innovations in industrial automation are now associated with the concept of the digital factory. “Siemens set the course for the digital automation of entire production facilities as far back as 1996, when the launch of its Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) Portal enabled companies to coordinate elements of their production operations and to closely intermesh hardware with software.”

Siemens has benefited in recent years from the German government’s formal strategy for what it calls “Industrie 4.0,” to merge physical products with digital controls and communications. The initiative is supported by funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy and emphasizes the merger of the digital and physical in manufacturing through cyber-physical control systems. Because the U.S. federal government doesn’t weigh in on specific economic plans to the same extent, the concept is more advanced in Europe, and the term has gathered cachet, especially as specific examples have proved profitable.

Factory of the Future:
The shining example of Industrie 4.0 is the previously mentioned Siemens plant in Amberg. It has increasingly computerized over the past 25 twenty-five years, and now is a laboratory for fusion of the physical and digital.

The plant’s 99.99885 percent quality rate would be astounding by any measure, but is even more incredible when you realize that it does not do daily repetitions of the same mass-production product run. Instead, Amberg is where the company makes the Simatic programmable logic controls (PLCs) .. that are the heart of its industrial output and which are used worldwide to allow Machine-to-Machine (M2M) automated assembly line self-regulation. They are made in more than a thousand variations for 60,000 customers worldwide, requiring frequent readjustments of the production line. In one of the ultimate examples of eating your own dog food, a thousand Simatic units are used to control the assembly line. Total output at the factory is 12 million yearly, or approximately one per second.

One downside of the Amberg system’s efficiency is that automation has nearly eliminated assembly line jobs: the only time humans touch one of the products is to put the initial circuit board on the assembly line. The 1,100-person workforce deals almost entirely with computer issues and overall supervision of the assembly line. Nevertheless, Siemens doesn’t visualize a totally automated, workerless factory in the future:

“We’re not planning to create a workerless factory,” says [Plant Manager Professor Karl-Heinz] Büttner. After all, the machines themselves might be efficient, but they don’t come up with ideas for improving the system. Büttner adds that the employees’ suggested improvements account for 40 percent of annual productivity increases. The remaining 60 percent is a result of infrastructure investments, such as the purchase of new assembly lines and the innovative improvement of logistics equipment. The basic idea here, says Büttner, is that “employees are much better than management at determining what works or doesn’t work in daily operation and how processes can be optimized.” In 2013 the [plant] adopted 13,000 of these ideas and rewarded employees with payments totaling around €1 million.

As Siemens develops new IIoT software, it is deployed at the Amberg factory to control the Simatic control units, which generate more than 50 million data points daily for analysis. Among other programs, the factory runs the NX and Teamcenter project lifecycle management software, allowing the staff to share realtime insights on the assembly line and fine-tune its operation.

Siemens’s strategy of merging the physical and digital has meant that its software offerings constantly expand, and they facilitate the kind of real and virtual collaborative workstyles that will be discussed at length in Chapter 8. Among others, they include offerings that specifically address key aspects of the IoT:

  • Product Lifecycle Management software programs, which let engineers both model new products and extensively test them virtually, without having to build and test physical models. This both cuts costs and allows more experimentation with “what if” variations on a design, because the risk of creating alternatives is so low. As we will see later, products designed with PLM can reach the market 50 percent faster. One particularly interesting part of the PLM offerings is one specifically for additive manufacturing (i.e., 3-D printing), to capitalize on this emerging option. Siemens has brought all of these programs together under the Teamcenter label, emphasizing that it provides an “open framework for interoperability,” a critical example of the “share the data” Essential Truth discussed in Chapter 2, allowing anyone who needs it companywide to access critical realtime data.
  • Digital Twins used in coordination with PLM, discussed earlier (Chapter 4) as the highest manifestation of the digital/physical synthesis, allow rigorous testing of products before they are launched.
  • Perhaps the most important of these software offerings for full realization of the Industrie 4.0 vision is the new combination of Siemens XHQ Operations Intelligence Software with the open-systems Siemens MindSphere cloud that adds advanced analytics and machine learning. Also, because it is cloud-based, the XHQ data can be ported to other cloud-based applications. If your company is considering an IoT initiative, the cloud-based alternative not only can save money compared to self-storage, but also opens the opportunity for using cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS).

 

Railigent

Fittingly, some of the most dramatic examples of Siemens’s IoT thinking in action have centered on one of its oldest lines of business: those electric trains invented in the nineteenth century.  The company’s Railigent system (which connects to its IoT Mindsphere platform) can:

  • cut rail systems’ operating costs by up to 10%
  • deliver eye-popping on-time performance (only 1 of 2,300 trains was late!)
  • and assure 99% availability through predictive maintenance.

Its new Mobility Services have taken over maintenance for more than fifty rail and transit programs.

Again, the company’s years of experience building and operating trains pays off in the cyberworld. Dr. Sebastian Schoning, ceo of Siemens’s client Gehring Technologies, which manufactures precision honing tools, told me that it was easier to sell Siemens’s digital services to his own client base because so much of the products they already own include Siemens devices, giving his customers confidence in the new offerings.

The key to Siemens’s Mobility Services is Sinalytics, its platform architecture for data analysis not just for rail, but also for industries ranging from medical equipment to windfarms. More than 300,000 devices currently feed realtime data to the platform. Sinalytics capitalizes on the data for multiple uses, including connectivity, data integration, analytics, and the all-important cyber security. They call the result not Big Data, but Smart Data. The platform also allows merging the data with data from sources such as weather forecasts which, in combination, can let clients optimize operating efficiency on a real-time M2M basis.

Elements of an IoT system on the trains that can be adapted to other physical products include:

  • Sensing. There are sensors on the engines and gearboxes. Vibration sensors on microphones measure noises from bearings in commuter trains. They can even measure how engine oil is aging, so it can be changed when really needed, rather than on an arbitrary schedule, a key predictive maintenance advantage.
  • Algorithms: These make sense of the data and act on it. They read out patterns, record deviations, and compare them with train control systems or with vehicles of the same type.
  • Predictive Maintenance: This replaces scheduled maintenance, dramatically reducing downtime and catastrophic failure. For example: “There’s a warning in one of the windows (of the control center display): engine temperature unusual. ‘We need to analyze the situation in greater depth to know what to do next—we call it root cause analysis,’ (says) Vice-President for Customer Support Herbert Padinger. ‘We look at its history and draw on comparative data from the fleet as a whole.’ Clicking on the message opens a chart showing changes in temperature during the past three months. The increased heat is gradually traced to a signal assembly. The Siemens experts talk with the customer to establish how urgent the need for action is, and then take the most appropriate steps.”8 Padinger says that temperature and vibration analyses from the critical gearboxes gives Siemens at least three days advance notice of a breakdown—plenty of time for maintenance or replacement. Predictive maintenance is now the norm for 70 to 80 percent of Siemens’s repairs.
  • Security: This is especially important given all of the miles of track and large crowds on station platforms. It includes video-based train dispatch and platform surveillance using Siemens’s SITRAIL D system, as well as cameras in the trains. The protections have to run the gamut from physical attacks to cyber-attacks. For security, the data is shared by digital radio, not networks that are also shared by consumers.

When operations of physical objects are digitized, it allows seamlessly integrating emerging digital technologies into the services—making these huge engines showcases for the newest technologies. For example, Siemens Digital Services also included augmented reality (so repair personnel can see manuals on heads-up displays), social collaboration platforms, and—perhaps most important—3-D printing-based additive manufacturing, so that replacement parts can be delivered with unprecedented speed. 3-D printing also allows a dramatic reduction in parts inventories, It allows for replacement of parts that may no longer be available through conventional parts depots. It may even improve on the original part’s function and durability, based on practical experience gained from observing the parts in use. For example, it’s often possible with 3-D printed replacement parts to consolidate three or four separate components into a single one, strengthening and simplifying it. Siemens has used 3-D printing for the past last three years, and it lets them assure customers that they will have replacement parts for the locomotive’s entire lifespan, which can exceed thirty years.

The new Mobility Services approach’s results are dramatic:

  • None of the Velaro trains that Siemens maintains for several operators have broken down since implementing Sinalytics. Among those in Spain only one has left more than fifteen minutes behind time in 2,300 trips: a 0.0004 percent lateness rate.
  • Reliability for London’s West Coast Mainline is 99.7 percent.
  • Perhaps most impressive because of the extreme cold conditions it must endure, the reliability rate for the Velaro service in Russia is 99.9 percent.11

Siemens’s ultimate goal is higher: what the company calls (pardon the pun) 100 percent Railability.

When it does reach those previously inconceivable quality benchmarks, Siemens predicts that, as the software and sensors evolve, the next stage will be new business models in which billing will be determined by guaranteeing customers availability and performance. The manufacturing industry is now at the stage where the automation of complete workflows is the only way to ensure a long-term, defendable, competitive position.

Siemens emphasizes that it’s not enough to simply digitize the design process. Everything from design through supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, and service must be linked in a continuous digital web, with “complete digital representation of the entire physical value chain is the ultimate goal.”

 

The fact that Siemens doesn’t just sell these IoT services but makes their own manufacturing the laboratory to develop and test them is an incredible testimonial to the IoT’s transformative potential in every aspect of companies’ operations. So, as I asked above, why are you holding back? Like to think that The Future Is Smart will give you the manual you need to make the transition (why wait for August  7, when you can preorder today?).

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Live Blogging #LlveWorx ’18, Day 2

Posted on 19th June 2018 in 3-D printing, AI, Augmented Reality, automotive, collaboration, communication, data, design, health, Internet of Things, logistics, M2M, maintenance, management, manufacturing, marketing, mobile, paradigm shift, retail, security, sensors, services, strategy, supply chain, transportation

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

Posted on 13th March 2018 in 3-D printing, aging, agriculture, circular company, cities, collaboration, data, design, energy, environmental, Essential Truths, government, health, home automation, Internet of Things, logistics, m-health, M2M, maintenance, management, manufacturing, marketing, mobile, open data, paradigm shift, privacy, Quantified Self, retail, security, seniors, sensors, services, smart cities, smart home, SmartAging, strategy, supply chain, transportation, wearables

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: LiveBlogging PTC’s LiveWorx

Posted on 23rd May 2017 in 3-D printing, circular company, cities, collaboration, data, design, Internet of Things, M2M, maintenance, management, manufacturing, marketing, paradigm shift, sensors, smart cities, smart home, strategy

Got here a little late for CEO Jim Heppelman’s keynote, so here goes!

  • Vuforia: digital twin gives you everything needed for merging digital “decorations” on the physical object
  • Unique perspective: AR takes digital back to the physical. Can understand & make better decisions.
  • Virtual reality would allow much of the same. Add in 3-D printing, etc.
  • “IoT is PLM.” Says PTC might be only company prepared to do both.
  • Says their logo captures the merger of digital and physical.
  • Case studies: they partnered with Bosch’s Rexroth division. Cytropac built-in IoT connectivity–  used Creo. Full life-cycle management. Can identify patterns of usage, etc. Using PTC’s analytics capacity, machine learning analysis. Want to improve cooling efficiency (it was high at first). Model-based digital twin to monitor product in field, then design an upgrade. How can they increase cooling efficiency 30%??  Came up with new design to optimize water channel that they will build in using 3-D printing. Cool (literally!). 43% increase in cooling efficiency. The design change results in new recommendation engine that helps in sales. Replaced operating manual with 3-D that anyone can understand. (BTW: very cool stagecraft: Heppelmann walks around stage interviewing the Rexroth design team at their workstations).
  • Ooh: getting citizen developers involved!!!  Speeds process, flexibility. App shows how products are actually operating in the field. Lets sales be much more proactive in field. Reinventing CRM.  May no longer need a physical showroom — just put on the AR headset.
  • Connectivity between all assets. The digital twin is identical, not fraternal. Brings AR into factory. They can merge new manufacturing equipment with legacy ones that didn’t have connectivity.  ABB has cloud-based retrofit sensors. Thingworx can connect almost anything, makes Industry 4.0 possible. Amazing demo of a simulated 3-D disassembly and replacement.
  • Hmmm — closing graphic of his preso is a constantly rotating circular one. Anticipating my “circular company” talk on Wednesday????

Closing the Loop With Enterprise Change Management. Lewis Lawrence of Weatherford, services to petroleum industry:

  • former engineer. In charge of Weatherford’s Windchill installation (they also use Creo).
  • hard hit by the drop in gas prices
  • constant state of flux
  • 15 years of constant evolution
  • their mantra: design anywhere, build anywhere.
  • enterprise change — not just engineering.
  • hmmm: according to his graphics, their whole change process is linear. IMHO, that’s obsolete in era of constant change: must evolve to cyclical. Ponderous process…
  • collect data: anything can be added, if it’s latest

The IoT Can Even Help You Breathe Better: GCE Group’s Zen-O portable oxygen concentrator for people with respiratory problems (not actually launched yet):

  • InVMA has built IoT application using ThingWorx to let patients, docs and service providers carefully monitor data
  • GCE made radical change from their traditional business in gas control devices. Zen-O is in the consumer markets. They were very interested in connected products — especially since their key competitor launched one!
  • Goals: predictive maintenance, improved patient care, asset management, development insight.
  • Design process very collaborative, with many partners.

The Digital Value Chain: GE’s Manufacturing Journey. Robert Ibe, global IT Engineering Leader at GE Industrial Solutions:

  • supports Brilliant Factory program.
  • they design and manufacture electrical distribution equipment, 30 factories worldwide.
  • “wing-to-wing” integrated process
  • had a highly complex, obsolete legacy
  • started in 2014: they were still running really old CAD technology. 14 CAD repositories that didn’t talk to each other. 15 year old PLM software. No confidence in any of data they had.
  • They began change with PLM — that’s where the digital thread begins.  PLM is foundation for their transformation.
  • PLM misunderstood: use it to map out cohesive, cross-functional, model-based strategy. Highlight relevance of “design anywhere — manufacture anywhere.” Make PLM master of your domain. Make it critical to commercial & manufacturing. Advertise benefits & value.
  • Whole strategy based on CAD. Windchill heart of the process.
  • Rate of implementation faster than business can keep up with!
  • Process: implementation approach:
    • design systems integration
    • model-based design
    • digital thread
    • manufacturing productivity.
  • common enterprise PLM framework
  • within Windchill, can see entire “digital bill of documents.”
  • focused on becoming critical for supply chain.
  • total shift from their paper-based legacy.
  • integrated regulatory compliance with every step of design.

It’s Not Your Grandmother’s IoT: Blockchain and IoT Morph Into An Emerging Technology Powerhouse:

  • Example of claims for fair-traded coffee that I’ve used in past

Finding Business Value in IoT panel:

  • Bayer — been in IoT (injection devices for medicine) for 7 years.  Reduced a lot of parts inventory.
  • Remote control of vending machines replaces paper & pencil
  • Your team needs to evangelize for biz benefits of IoT
  • New Opportunities:
    • vision and language
    • interacting with physical world
    • problem solving.
  • Didn’t know!  Skype can do real-time translation.
  • Google Deep Mind team worked internally, cut energy costs at its server farms. 15% energy reduction.
  • Digital progress makes economic pie bigger, BUT  most people aren’t benefitting economicallly. Some may be worse off. “Great decoupling” — mushrooming economic gap. One reason is that tech affects different groups differently.
  • “Entirely possible to create inclusive prosperity” through tech!

 

WEDNESDAY

Delivering Smart City Solutions and an Open Citywide Platform to Accelerate Economic Growth and Promote New Solution Innovation, Scott McCarley, PTC:

  • $40 trillion potential benefits from smart cities
  • 1st example & starting point for many cities, is smart lightpoles. Major savings plus value added. Real benefit is building on that, with systems of systems (water, traffic, energy, etc.) — the systems don’t operate in isolation.
  • Future buildings may have built-in batteries to add to power supply. Water reclamation, etc.
  • Cities are focused on KPIs across all target markets.
  • Cornerstone systems for a city: power & grid, water/wastewater, building management, city services & infrastructure.
  • Leveraging ThingWorx to address these needs:
    • deploy out-of-box IoT solutions from a ThingWorx Solution Provider: All examples, include Aquamatix, DEPsys (grid), Sensus, All Traffic, Smoove (bike sharing).
    • leverage ThingWorx to rapidly develop new IoT solutions.
      connect to any device, rapidly develop applications, visually model systems, quickly develop new apps. Augmented reality will play a role!
    • create role-based dashboards:
      one for your own operations, another for city.
    • bring the platform to create a citywide platform.
      Sum of connected physical assets, communication networks, and smart city solutions.

Digital Supply Networks: The Smart Factory. Steven Shepley, Deloitte:

  • 3 types of systems: 1) foundational visualization solutions:  KPIs, etc. 2) advanced analytical solutions 3) cyber-physical solutions.
  • Priority smart factory solutions:
    • advanced planning (risk-adjusted MRP), dynamic sequencing, cross network.
    • value chain integration: signal-based customer/supplies integration, dynamic distribution routing/tracking, digital twin.
    • asset efficiency: predictive maintenance, real-time asset tracking intelligence, energy management
    • labor productivity: robotic and cognitive automation, augmented reality-driven efficiency, real-time safety monitoring
    • exponential tech: 3-D printing, drones, flexible robots.
  • How to be successful: think big, start small, scale fast
  • Act differently: multi-disciplinary teams,
  • sensors getting simpler, easier to connect & retrofit. National Connectors particularly good.

Global Smart Home, Smart Enterprise, and Smart Cities IoT Use Cases. Ken Herron, Unified InBox, Pte.

  • new focus on customer
  • H2M: human to machine communication is THE key to IoT success. Respect their interests.
  • Austin TX: “robot whisperer” — industrial robot company. Their robots aging out, getting out of tune, etc. Predictive analytics anticipates problems.
  • Stuttgart: connected cow — if one cow is getting sick, may spread to entire herd. Intervene.
  • Kuala Lumpur: building bot — things such as paper towel dispensers communicating with management.
  • London: Concierge chatbot — shopper browsing can chat with assistant on combining outfits.
  • Dubai: smart camera. Help find your car in mega-shopping center: read license plates, message the camera, it gives you map to the car.
  • Singapore: Shout — for natural disasters. Walks the person making the alert through process, confirms choices.
  • Stuttgart: Feinstaubalarm — occasional very bad airborne dust at certain times. Tells people with lung problems options, such as taking mass transit.
  • Singapore: Smart appliances — I always thought smart fridge was stupid, but in-fridge camera that lets you shoot a “shelfie” does make sense
  • Fulda Germany: smart clothing for military & police: full record of personal health at the moment. Neat!
  • Noida India — smart sneakers can automatically post your run results (see connection to my SmartAging concept)

Business Impact of IoT, Eric Schaeffer, Accenture:

  • Michelin delivery trucks totally reinvented, major fuel savings, other benefits.
  • manufacturing being deconstructed
  • smart, connected products are causing it
  • industrial companies must begin transformation today

Thingworx: Platform for Management Revolution. W. David Stephenson, Stephenson Strategies:

Here are key points from my presentation about how the IoT can allow radical transformation from linear & hierarchical companies to IoT-centric “circular companies” (my entire presentation can be found here):

  • The IoT can be the platform for dramatic management change that was impossible in the past.
  • Making this change requires an extraordinary shift in management thinking: from hierarchy to collaboration.
  • The results will be worth the effort: not only more efficiency & precision, but also new creativity, revenue streams, & customer loyalty. 
  • In short, it will allow total transformation!

Kickstarting America’s Digital Transformation. Aneesh Chopra & Nicholas Thompson!

  • on day one, Our President (not the buffoon) told Chopra he wanted default to be switch from closed to open government & data.
  • National Wireless Initiative: became law 1 yr. after it was introduced.  Nationwide interoperable, secure wireless system.
  • Obama wanted to harness power of Internet to grow the economy. Talked to CIO of P & G, who was focused on opening up the company to get ideas from outside.
  • Thompson big on open data, but he thinks a lot more now is closed, we’re going wrong way.
  • Interesting example of getting down cost of solar to $1 per installed watt!!
  • Thompson: growing feeling that technology isn’t serving us economically. Chopra: need to democratize the benefits.
  • Chopra talking about opening up Labor Dept. data to lead to creative job opportunities for underserved.

 

 

 

 

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More Blockchain Synergies With IoT: Supply Chain Optimization

Posted on 17th January 2017 in circular company, circular economy, collaboration, data, Essential Truths, Internet of Things, logistics, M2M, management, manufacturing, marketing, open data, supply chain

The more I learn about blockchain’s possible uses — this time for supply chains — the more convinced I am that it is absolutely essential to full development of the IoT’s potential.

I recently raved about blockchain’s potential to perhaps solve the IoT’s growing security and privacy challenges. Since then, I’ve discovered that it can also further streamline and optimize the supply chain, another step toward the precision that I think is such a hallmark of the IoT.

As I’ve written before, the ability to instantly share (something we could never do before) real-time data about your assembly line’s status, inventories, etc. with your supply chain can lead to unprecdented integration of the supply chain and factory, much of it on a M2M basis without any human intervention. It seems to me that the blockchain can be the perfect mechanism to bring about this synchronization.

A brief reminder that, paradoxically, it’s because blockchain entries (blocks) are shared, and distributed (vs. centralized) that it’s secure without using a trusted intermediary such as a bank, because no one participant can change an entry after it’s posted.

Complementing the IBM video I included in my last post on the subject, here’s one that I think succinctly summarizes blockchain’s benefits:

A recent LoadDelivered article detailed a number of the benefits from building your supply chain around blockchain. They paralleling the ones I mentioned in my prior post regarding its security benefits, of using blockchain to organize your supply chain (with some great links for more details):

  • “Recording the quantity and transfer of assets – like pallets, trailers, containers, etc. – as they move between supply chain nodes (Talking Logistics)
  • Tracking purchase orders, change orders, receipts, shipment notifications, or other trade-related documents
  • Assigning or verifying certifications or certain properties of physical products; for example determining if a food product is organic or fair trade (Provenance)
  • Linking physical goods to serial numbers, bar codes, digital tags like RFID, etc.
  • Sharing information about manufacturing process, assembly, delivery, and maintenance of products with suppliers and vendors.”

That kind of information, derived from real-time IoT sensor data, should be irresistible to companies compared to the relative inefficiency of today’s supply chain.

The article goes on to list a variety of benefits:

  • “Enhanced Transparency. Documenting a product’s journey across the supply chain reveals its true origin and touchpoints, which increases trust and helps eliminate the bias found in today’s opaque supply chains. Manufacturers can also reduce recalls by sharing logs with OEMs and regulators (Talking Logistics).
  • Greater Scalability. Virtually any number of participants, accessing from any number of touchpoints, is possible (Forbes).
  • Better Security. A shared, indelible ledger with codified rules could potentially eliminate the audits required by internal systems and processes (Spend Matters).
  • Increased Innovation. Opportunities abound to create new, specialized uses for the technology as a result of the decentralized architecture.”

Note that it the advantages aren’t all hard numbers, but also allowing marketing innovations, similar to the way the IoT allows companies to begin marketing their products as services because of real-time data from the products in the field. In the case of applying it to the supply chain (food products, for example), manufacturers could get a marketing advantage because they could offer objective, tamper-proof documentation of the product’s organic or non-GMO origins. Who would have thought that technology whose primary goal is increasing operating efficiency could have these other, creative benefits as well?

Applying  blockchain to the supply chain is getting serious attention, including a pilot program in the Port of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest.  IBM, Intel, Cisco and Accenture are among the blue-chip members of Hyperledger, a new open source Linux Foundation collaboration to further develop blockchain. Again, it’s the open source, decentralized aspect of blockchain that makes it so effective.

Logistics expert Adrian Gonzalez is perhaps the most bullish on blockchain’s potential to revolutionize supply chains:

“the peer-to-peer, decentralized architecture of blockchain has the potential to trigger a new wave of innovation in how supply chain applications are developed, deployed, and used….(becoming) the new operating system for Supply Chain Operating Networks“

It’s also another reminder of the paradoxical wisdom of one of my IoT “Essential Truths,” that we must learn to ask “who else could share this information” rather than hoarding it as in the past. It is the very fact that blockchain data is shared that means it can’t be tampered with by a single actor.

What particularly intrigues me about widespread use of blockchain at the heart of companies’ operations and fueled by real-time data from IoT sensors and other devices is that it would ensure that privacy and security, which I otherwise fear would always be an afterthought, would instead be inextricably linked with achieving efficiency gains. That would make companies eager to embrace the blockchain, assuring their attention to privacy and security as part of the deal. That would be a definite win-win.

Blockchain must definitely be on your radar in 2017.

 

Lo and behold, right after I posted this, news that WalMart, the logistics savants, are testing blockchain for supply chain management!

 

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Siemens’s MindSphere: from automation to digitalization

Posted on 30th November 2016 in automotive, circular company, data, Internet of Things, M2M, manufacturing, open data

Perhaps the most important component of a successful IoT transformation is building it on a robust platform, because that alone can let your company go beyond random IoT experiments to achieve an integrated IoT strategy that can add new components systematically and create synergistic benefits by combining the various aspects of the program.

A good starting point for discussion of such platforms is a description of the eight key platform components as detailed by IoT Analytics:

  1. “Connectivity & normalization: brings different protocols and different data formats into one ‘software’  interface ensuring accurate data streaming and interaction with all devices.
  2. Device management: ensures the connected ‘things’ are working properly, seamlessly running patches and updates for software and applications running on the device or edge gateways.
  3. Database: scalable storage of device data brings the requirements for hybrid cloud-based databases to a new level in terms of data volume, variety, velocity and veracity.
  4. Processing & action management: brings data to life with rule-based event-action-triggers enabling execution of ‘smart’ actions based on specific sensor data.
  5. Analytics: performs a range of complex analysis from basic data clustering and deep machine learning to predictive analytics extracting the most value out of the IoT data-stream.
  6. Visualization: enables humans to see patterns and observe trends from visualization dashboards where data is vividly portrayed through line-, stacked-, or pie charts, 2D- or even 3D-models.
  7. Additional tools: allow IoT developers prototype, test and market the IoT use case creating platform ecosystem apps for visualizing, managing and controlling connected devices.
  8. External interfaces: integrate with 3rd-party systems and the rest of the wider IT-ecosystem via built-in application programming interfaces (API), software development kits (SDK), and gateways.”

Despite (or because of, the complexity,) I think this is a decent description, because a robust IoT platf0rm really must encompass so many functions. The eight points give a basis for deciding whether what a company hawks as an IoT platform really deserves that title or really constitutes only part of the necessary whole (Aside: it’s also a great illustration of my Essential Truth that, instead of hoarding data as in the past, we must begin to ask “who else can use this data?” either inside the company or, potentially, outside, then use technology such as an IoT platform to integrate all those data uses productively.).

During my recent Barcelona trip (disclaimer: Siemens paid my way and arranged special access to some of its key decision makers, but made no attempt to limit my editorial judgment) I interviewed the company’s Chief Strategy Officer, Dr. Horst J. Kayser, who made it clear (as I mentioned in my earlier post about Siemens) that one of the advantages the company has over pure-play software firms is that it can apply its software offerings internally first and tweak them there, because of its 169-year heritage as a manufacturer, and “sits on a vast program of automation.”

Siemens’s IoT platform, MindSphere  is a collaboration with SAP, using the latter’s vast HANA cloud.  It ties together all components of Siemens’s IoT offerings, including data analytics, connectivity capabilities, developers’ tools, applications and services. MindSphere focuses on monitoring manufacturing assets’ real-time status, to evaluate and use customers’ data, producing insights that can cut production costs, improve performance, and even switch to predictive maintenance. Its Mind Connect Nano collects data from the assets and transferring it to MindSphere.

The “digital twin” is integrated throughout the MindSphere platform. Kayser says that “there’s a digital twin of the entire process, from conception through the manufacturing and maintenance, and it feeds the data back into the model.” In fact,  one dramatic example of the concept in action is the new Maserati Ghibli, created in 16 months instead of 30 — almost 50% less time than for prior models.  Using the Teamcenter PLM software, the team was able to virtually develop and extensively test the car before anything was created physically.

IMHO, Mindsphere and components such as Teamware might really be the key to actualizing my dream of the circular company, in this case with the IoT-based real-time digital twin at the heart of the enterprise — as Kayser said, “everything is done through one consistent data set.)” I hope to explore my concept, and the benefits I think it can produce, more with the Siemens strategists in the future!  I tried the idea out on several of them in Barcelona, and no one laughed, so we’ll see…

As with the company’s rail digitization services that I mentioned in my earlier post, there’s an in-house guinea pig for MindSphere as well: the company’s “Factory of the Future” in Amberg. The plant manufactures Simatic controllers, the key to the company’s automation products and services, to which digitalization is now being added as part of the company’s Industrie 4.0 IoT plan for manufacturing (paralleling GE’s “Industrial Internet.”). As you may be aware, Siemens’s efforts in this area are a subset of a formal German government/industry initiative — I  doubt seriously we’ll see this in the U.S. under Trump.

The results of digitalization at Amberg are astonishing by any measure, especially the ultimate accomplishment: a  99.9988 percent rate (no typo!!), which is even more incredible when you realize this is not mass production with long, uniform production runs: the plant manufactures more than 1,000 varieties of the controllers, with a total volume of 12 million Simatic products each year, or about one per second.  Here are some of the other benefits of what they call an emphasis on optimizing the entire value chain:

  • shorter delivery time: 24 hours from order.
  • time to market reduced by up to 50%.
  • cost savings of up to 25%

Of course there are several other robust IoT platforms, including GE’s Predix and PTC’s Thingworx, but my analysis shows that Mindsphere meets IoT Analytics’ criteria, and, combined with the company’s long background in manufacturing and automation, should make it a real player in the industrial internet. Bravo!

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High-speed 3D Printer & IoT Could Really Revolutionize Design & Manufacturing

Posted on 10th August 2016 in 3-D printing, automotive, design, environmental, Internet of Things, logistics, management, manufacturing, marketing, supply chain

There’s a new high-speed 3D printer on the horizon which, coupled with the IoT, could really revolutionize product design and manufacturing.

I’ve raved in the past about 3D printing’s revolutionary potential, but I’ll admit I was still thinking primarily in terms of rapid prototyping and one-off repair parts.  Now, according to Bloomberg, HP is going to transfer its ink-jet printer expertise to the 3D printer field, with a $130,000 model set for release later this year that, for the first time, could make 3D printing practical and affordable for large-scale manufacturing, with “parts at half the expense and at least 10 times faster than rival printers — and likely [using] lower-cost materials.”

Combined with the IoT, that would go a long way toward making my “precision manufacturing” vision a reality, with benefits including less waste, streamlined products (a single part replacing multiple ones that previously had to be combined into the final configuration),  factories that are less reliant on outside parts and encouraging mass customization of products that would delight customers. 

Customers are already lining up, and see manufacturing-scale 3D printing as a game-changer:

“Jabil Circuit Inc. [itself a digital supply-chain innovator] plans to be an early adopter of HP’s device, printing end plastic parts for aerospace, auto and industrial applications that it currently makes using processes such as injection molding, John Dulchinos, vice president of digital manufacturing at the electronics-manufacturing service provider, said in an interview.

“‘We have use cases in each of these segments,’ Dulchinos said. ‘Parts that are in hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of units — it’s cheaper to 3D print them than mold them.’”

Other HP partners in the venture include BMW, Nike, and and Johnson & Johnson. The article cites research by Wohlers Associates predicting that manufacturing using 3D printers could “eventually grab at least 5 percent of the worldwide manufacturing economy, and translate into $640 billion in annual sales.”

3D Systems is also making the transition to large-scale 3D printing.

As I’ve written before in regard to GE’s leadership in the field, toss in some nanotech on the side, and you’ve really got something.

 

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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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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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