Is IoT the next Game Changer? The next big hype? Or is it just a good business practice that engineering driven companies like EMC were already doing 20 years ago.
Hype cycles can be very compelling. And so is the CEO yelling in your ear “Why don’t I have IoT yesterday?” Let’s ask ourselves why. Industry 4.0, IoT, what is the primary purpose? What are you going to do with all that data? And are you really ready to design things with software, electronics, cloud connections? You have been making sneakers for 50 years – how are your electronics skills?
Here is the problem with jumping on the hype rollercoaster. Before you put that first chip in the shoe, you have to know what you are trying to measure. This comes back to a business strategy discussion. There is nothing technical here. You need to be asking WHY? Why are we doing this? Why will the customer want this? Is there really a benefit to adding new electronics, software, and an app to the toothbrush that worked perfectly fine without it? Who is paying for this development and increased product costs?
Once you answered WHY and you feel good about that, now you can talk about the HOW. How are you going to put this technology into your product? Our partner Microsoft has a great IOT platform on Azure that includes templates for experimenting, an IoT library, data aggregators, and BI tools. What I really like is you can use this toolbox to mock up and prototype your ideas. But that’s just protyping and innovation. Microsoft and Aras agree that there is a big HOW that you still need to consider. Next step after the lab prototypes is to design into your product the sensors that you need for the telemetry that is meaningful for exactly your product – sensors, software, cloud data aggregation, feedback to your PLM system,… lots of moving parts. You better have a Systems Engineering platform in place, because you are now managing something very very complex.
The good news is you’re not too late. It takes time to get a new product to market. Your literally talking about running some experiments, figure out what is meaningful then put the dreams of IoT big-data and revenues away for 2 years… Bad news for the CEO, but IoT is not something you turn on yesterday. An IoT strategy must be formed, the useful sensors must be designed into a product that gets completely designed, developed, manufactured, packaged, shipped and 2 years later they’re out on the street phoning home for the first time. This is moonshot kind of stuff. You plan for half a decade before you get meaningful feedback.
Let’s take a common sense approach. Design your POC to validate the kind of data you can get. In parallel someone needs to be thinking about what is meaningful big-data to be collecting. Move that work back into the design process. And this is where you better be taking a Systems Engineering approach because we are not just talking about YOUR product and its software, but the thing that it connects to and the feedback loop to your PLM for your design and field maintenance teams.
The good news is you are not behind the curve. But pragmatically, it is time to start learning Systems Engineering and get a PLM system in place. Because PLM is Systems Engineering and IoT is all about YOUR Business of Engineering. Why are you putting IoT into your product? How are you doing it? How are you validating it? These are business decisions you make to create great products that are profitable and loved by your customer.
Posted Thu, Mar 31 2016 5:46 PM by Peter Schroer