Internet of Things will be the manager assistant of the future
This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends
There is a huge difference regarding Internet of Things considering a connected household and (connected) business benefits. Last week I have discussed mundane features. You can read about it here. But reducing energy waste in your house for example is totally different from introducing RFID chips on every product in a supermarket chain to work more efficient. In this post I would like to highlight an upcoming internet of thinngs business case from Virgin.
The new fleet of Virgin planes will create 500 gigabyte of data every single flight. So a return flight will generate 1 Terabyte of data. IT Director David Bulman is expecting an explosion of information. The data will not only be generated from digital sources but also from physical ‘entities’ like employees, customers, planes and cargo. In an interview with Computerworld UK the IT director quoted:
“The latest planes we are getting, the Boeing 787s, are incredibly connected. Literally every piece of that plane has an internet connection, from the engines, to the flaps, to the landing gear. If there is a problem with one of the engines we will know before it lands to make sure that we have the parts there. It is getting to the point where each different part of the plane is telling us what it is doing as the flight is going on. This level of operational insight will involve generating large amounts of data from each 787 aircraft”
Bulman also said in the interview that you can enter a plane without saying a single word to anyone on the airport. Your passport data is loaded onto other devices so you do not have to check in the regular way. Bulman also realized that there are large demands placed at the IT infrastructure of the company. The IT director thinks scalable cloud solutions will be needed to deal with the huge amount of increasing data.
“If you are talking that level of data you can’t just chuck ten disks into your data centre anymore, you have to look at cloud based solutions and how you can store data.”
Not only Virgins business can be measured with RFID tags, Bluetooth and other sensors. These manners can also be integrated to each part of your organisation; embedded technology which will generate data and send the generated data to your network. Not long from now the current status of each of your products and processes can be measured. Basically you can now see what is really going on inside your company. The internet of Things will be the manager’s assistant of the future.
The Machine2Machine market (M2) is estimated at 1.200 billion dollars at 2022, the estimation of connected devices ranges from 24 to 50 billion in 2020. When you look at your business, think about what kind of aspects are measured currently. And now, think again and imagine what kind of aspects could be measured and adjust to reduce waste and to work more efficient then you are doing at the moment. Whether you are a production company, a supermarket chain or a insurance company. Real time data decision making engines are not to far away.