Industrial Revolution 4.0: how the Internet of Things is changing business and how to stay afloat

Imagine waking up in the morningAfter ten years. Literally from nowhere your favorite music is playing. The wardrobe is moving apart, offering a clean bathrobe. The robot put slippers in advance at the foot of the bed. While you are going to the washbasin, the floor of the bathroom gets warmer, and a small amount of water is heated in the boiler - just enough to shave and wash ritual. In the kitchen, coffee is prepared, breakfast is heated, appliances turn on, and a car wakes up in the garage. Hello, man of the future, you deserve such honors. And this is not fiction: everything is already working, growing, gaining mass, like an avalanche.

Ancient wisdom says that Achilles nevercatch up with the turtle, if at the beginning of the race the turtle was a little ahead. Technological advances will always be ahead of your business by default. What to do?

Fourth industrial revolution

Analysts believe that the great benefits ofThe fourth industrial revolution and from its direct manifestation - the Internet of Things (IoT) - will receive not an ordinary person, but the owner of a business, an enterprise, a factory. In general, the business executive and industrialist. And this is not surprising: the beauty of the Internet of Things in scalability, and where else is scalability so needed, if not in a large enterprise, and of a very different plan? In the end, so that coffee is brewed in the kitchen, a lot of mind (and smart technologies) is not needed. But to assemble a motorcycle to order in six hours is already more difficult.

The Internet of Things is characterized by two words: millions of sensors. Imagine that every thing of your everyday life - from the toe to the car - lives its own life, perfectly aware of its role in your daily life. Socks are not lost, cars wash themselves, park and even ... drive. You do not even need to keep the steering wheel. But you've probably already heard about self-driving cars and RFID sensors, thanks to which you can track every thing within a given area. GPS, Bluetooth, NFC - suitable technology mass. You are more interested in how this can be applied.

Four words: big data - great opportunity. Big Data (big data) - one of the breakthrough trends of this decade - is fundamentally changing the way enterprises operate. When each element of a plant or warehouse is equipped with a sensor that signals the state of this element, and there is a system that reads and analyzes these states (for example, SAP S4 / HANA), you can configure the plant to work like a clock so that not a single precious second is lost so that everything worked with micron accuracy. Accurate knowledge of the state of all elements of a business (no, of course, you know your business well, but not every element and not in real time) leads us to the following points. But about them in order.

Simplification and Automation. Recall how it was before. Subjective information collected by the best worker, who still loses a little bit capable robot, is sent to the database. The database, which is probably collected in some Excel, is sent by e-mail to the data receiving and processing center. On the spot, the “best workers” analyze it, working with speed, at times losing the speed of light, and then doing as best they can. How will it be now? The data is collected independently, processed independently, they themselves move, the system lives its own life.

Personalization and efficiency. Previously, scalability meant only one thing: standardization in the worst sense of the word. Identical patterns, sizes, colors, defects - but the production goes, ahem, at an accelerated pace. The cherished twenty-first-century man in the street wanted personalization - and new niches appeared, for example, for the electronics market: all sorts of accessories, removable batteries, covers, wires, alternative chargers ... you can endlessly list. With the Internet of Things, the approach already calculated in advance for the consumer is scaled: the product can be made quickly, in large quantities, but taking into account the personal wishes of the consumer. That, in turn, increases the efficiency of the enterprise: no need to redo the conveyor in order to fulfill individual orders.

Improving quality and speed. Make a person do the same cars - andhe will surely make one mistake. Give the car the opportunity to create their own self - and get consistently high-quality product. The difference between a man and a car is that a man got up on the wrong foot, but the car follows a predetermined scenario (drawing), and he also checks himself at every stage. Multiply previous items by quality and get an inevitable increase in speed.

Probably worth repeating: who does not have time, he will be late. Achilles will never catch up with a turtle: you need a qualitative leap. But how can business keep up with the rapid course of time?

To understand your business, you need to understandconsumer. To feel your business, you need an ERP-system, which will provide every second contact with a hundred million sensors - will become the brain for your body. To stay afloat, you need to foresee the future - this was the secret of success of the greatest entrepreneurs of mankind.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning = planning)Enterprise Resource) is a class of systems for managing production, labor, finance, and assets, focused on optimizing enterprise resources. They are many: SAP, Sage, Oracle, even 1C-Enterprise are examples of such.

According to supporters of integratedproduction, which promises the Internet of things, the fourth industrial revolution can change the very definition of human labor. Having their eyes, ears and brain, the machines will be able to more accurately, quickly and efficiently perform tasks that have always been performed by people. Will it be bad for people? Not. They will be able to move on to more creative, intellectual tasks, to strategy and planning, to analysis and foresight.

What will be the ERP-system of the future?

First, scalable. It should be able to read big data (Big Data) from millions of sensors (receptors of your body - your business) in real time and work equally well in a separate area (say, in a separate cell) and in general (for example, keep balance on two legs - this still can not teach robots).

Secondly, flexible. Flexibility is necessary for the mind to survive. In the light of the development of the Internet of things, it will be strange if the “brain” of the system - ERP - is tied to a single mainframe or even a laptop. The ability to manage a business from a tablet, from a computer, in augmented reality, even from a smart watch - this is the way out. Distribution of business management elements in the cloud and on the ground, on the server and in your pocket - everywhere.

Third, the ERP system of the future should besensitive. And in order to analyze this point, let us return to the very beginning of our note: to the connection of business with the consumer. At the core of any business, be it b2b or b2c, the provision of social services or consulting, analytics or machine manufacturing, is an important aspect: focus on the client, partner, end user. Without respect and understanding of the client (and in some cases, without creating a client need at the expense of the ecosystem), there will be no business. ERP-system of the future should be sensitive to the requirements of an individual customer. Personalization is one of the strengths of the Internet of Things. This is the case when both the customer and the manufacturer win.

ERP-system gradually more and more likethe living brain of the body, which is your business. The thinner and faster the connection between the individual cell elements, the more efficient the business. The connection between the smart products of the Internet of Things and the smart machines that produce them will allow the machines to independently determine the target production depending on the needs of the end user.

How will the Internet of things of the future work?

If your phone knows its battery is coming soon"Die", it can give a signal to the factory, where a new battery will go into production - precisely calculated for your phone. If this is a new phone, it will already arrive with your settings. Exactly at that moment, when you throw away the old thing, the new one will be waiting for you. So the consumer sees the future of the Internet of Things, 2020. Feel yourself a future producer - and you will understand what the “brain” of your business should be in the future. An entrepreneur will need to feel every cell of his business.

Sergey Kuzin, Senior Architect, Business Solutions, SAP CISbelieves that without introducing elements of the Internetthings any company will become uncompetitive. And really, what kind of competition can we talk about if you use black labor when everyone uses robots? When do you use horses and do you all drive cars for a long time? The fourth industrial revolution shifts the focus from the technology itself to the control of technology. On the proper use of resources, continuous analysis of millions of variables and strategic planning.

By 2020, the Internet of Things market will becomecolossal, and win the one who quickly rearm. One day, Bill Gates said that in the future there would be two types of companies: those that went online and those that went out of business. But that was thirty years ago. Paraphrasing the legendary billionaire, we can say that by 2020 there will also be two types of companies: those that went on the Internet of things, and those that went out of business.

However, it is necessary to solve several issues. Alexander Anufrienko and Ivan Kireev from Skolkovo believe that the Internet of things is hampered by the lackopen standards and security flaws. Increased personalization - the inevitable effect of the development of the Internet of Things - entails threats to personal security. It's one thing when your website is hacked, and quite another when your pacemaker or self-driving car is hacked. Avalanche tendency should chew and spit out both questions, they will be resolved anyway.

Modern entrepreneur half the timespends on operational tasks - on data analysis, on their interpretation, on making tactical decisions. Does this require a quality product? Of course. But the product would be even better if the entrepreneur moved from the tactics and placement of his internal troops on the battlefield (for the customer, of course) to the strategy - he began to look more forward, make strategic decisions that will affect the company tomorrow, a year later, a hundred years old.

Once upon a time, so in 2020, in a hodgepodge and chaosdata - so they seem to man - true artificial intelligence is born. Perhaps it is already embodied in various kinds of ERP-applications. This he will open the doors of your car in front of you. That he will manage your business for you, as no one of the people could in the whole history of mankind. He has yet to come up with a name. The newest enterprise resource management system will equip entrepreneurs of the largest business on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution and will reveal to the world the true power of the Internet of things, big data, business networks and cloud technologies.

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