It’s a Brave New World. Are we ready for it?
Today, we live in a world where we can already manage our homes with the sound of our voice.
I predict that one day your toaster will talk to your fridge and alert you when you are running out of bread, and your fridge will not only have the ability to self-heal/fix itself but will be smart enough to predict that you will run out of milk based on your pattern of consumption and weight sensitive shelves, will proactively order the milk by finding the best price for the brand you use in your zip code, and have it either delivered or alert your phone when you are near that store!
Ubiquitous global access to broad bandwidth internet has created a digital nervous system connecting individuals to their cars, home/office, city, environment, industries, etc. We’re rapidly approaching the time when every physical device will be able to continuously share its status in real time (via sensors that cost less than a dime). There will be a “smart digital twin” of your fridge, your car, your home, jet engines, wind turbines, assembly lines, MRI’s and almost every aspect of the world we live in, and software will be the medium facilitating and automating ingestion and processing of the massive amounts of data produced and making sense of what the data is telling us.
The result? A smart, connected digital world and access to smart/intelligent entities informing us constantly of how and what they are doing but more importantly even predicting how things will be helping/guiding us in our decision making. This will revolutionize how we live our lives, how we work and produce and how we prevent and forecast unwanted events proactively. A brave new world, indeed.
To be clear, there’s no going back. In terms of connectivity, we have let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
If everything will be “smart”, telling us what state they are in at any given moment, how can we respond to this massive intelligence, sort out its insights, decide, and take action in a timely and appropriate fashion? If a jet engine in flight reports a part is about to fail, there is no time to mess with the software re-design and retests. If your WIFI from a little sensor stick-on on your skin sends your vital signals and reports a heart rate issue or even a heart attack, how effectively is that being processed, appropriate alerts communicated, and preventive action immediately taken? To bring it down to everyday life in a simpler illustration, if my IoT-enabled frying pan that helps me cook a salmon to perfection doesn’t provide an in-time alert to turn the salmon over, all that intelligence in my “smart” frying pan is burnt and smoked!
Because of the focus of our work at Decisyon, we see these same concepts being played out in industrial settings all over the world every day. In every vertical from manufacturing to renewable energy, aviation, pharmaceuticals, and transportation industries, those who desire to have a competitive advantage are finding ways to become interconnected and the pressure to innovate and the pace at which we have to outperform our competition are about to get even more intense.
To transform from a physical to a digital operation, however, requires more than just connectivity. It requires the ability to collect, aggregate, normalize visualize, analyze – and place into action – all the data that is constantly being sent to these devices. Because “data never sleeps” and arrives from many sources every few seconds of every hour of every day, manufacturers require a solution that can rapidly handle the digital inflow and account for the entire data journey – from aggregation to action. No more piecemeal data reports. No more person-to-person handoffs that create errors and lower productivity. Instead, our solution immediately presents either a problem or an opportunity. And, therefore, a better decision can be made sooner.
In other words, action is taken. While humans are making decisions with their data, machines are now automatically adjusting to accommodate the information coming in. There is one fact, however, we must not overlook: you can’t make data useful, if you can’t make sense of it. More than seeing what your data is trying to tell you, is the matter of having the tools to understand what you can do with it. Combining our flexible, modular IIoT solutions and data processing expertise we’re helping global companies achieve more productivity, less supply chain disruption and allowing them to understand the transforming power of data available at their fingertips.
The reason for becoming as digitized and automated as possible goes beyond operational efficiency. Having data and extracting meaning from it can actually create a better work environment. Being notified ahead of time – before problems exist – is a smarter way to protect our world, to conserve energy, and yes, to increase productivity.
Is your current software development and deployment methodology adequate for the real-time massive data – that “never sleeps” – coming out of every physical device? Is simple processing and automating of the data enough? How will you leverage the embedded intelligence? We’d love to hear your perspective on this.
