It’s easy to see why some people make the assumption that one of the results of the Internet of Things will be fully-automated factories.

After all, if automatic, real-time machine-2-machine data sharing would allow self-starting and self-regulating machinery, wouldn’t that allow us a utopian vision of completely autonomous manufacturing?

Instead, I think Bosch’s Volkmar Denner nailed it with this blog entry. He says that rather than complete automation:

“Instead, it’s about finding ways to increase agility. Putting that into figures, optimizing resource allocation within a more flexible production process can result in a jump in productivity of as much as 30 percent. Our goal is to be able to customize even the smallest unit volumes while retaining optimum productivity, and ultimately leading to achieve optimized multi-variant series production.”

I agree totally that what’s going to happen is an end to centralized management and top-down control of information (see my last post, on “Buckyball Management”!, with decentralized, self-management emerging that could threaten old industry leaders who don’t get it (see my posts about how GE does get it!) :

“… And I’m convinced that this shift will provide opportunities for established companies to offer new business models. But they too need to watch out: the IoTS is shaking up what until now has been very much a closed market, opening it up for entirely new players such as IT companies. Here, the IoTS is not just about connecting objects, machines, and systems. On the contrary, it’s also about how to use the data that this connectivity generates. And instead of using this information only within the plant itself, now everyone along the manufacturing chain can be given access to the data over the internet. Once again, the knowledge gained from these data can be applied to generate new business models.”

Denner says that one of the #IoT services that Bosch — the leading supplier of automotive sensors and one of the leaders in industrial sensors — is developing is predictive maintenance, which innovators such as GE (with its jet turbines) and the railroads (I’ve never traced my ancestry on my father’s side, but I harbor the possibility that I’m descended from the Stephensons, pere et fils, who invented the locomotive, so I have a warm spot in my heart for that industry…) are already doing.  As Denner says, “Having such a solution in place allows organizations to offer their customers new and improved levels of service, including a guarantee of reduced downtimes.”

So don’t count out the human element in manufacturing once the IoT is commonplace: in fact, it will be more important, and more valuable, than ever!