Thought Floor

1.0 Introduction:

This article embodies the architectural thoughts on Internet of Things for Architects and developers. The aim of this paper is to provide a base architecture that covers challenges and main requirements of IOT projects and systems - devices, server side, cloud based services, third party integration that interact with and manage the devices.

1.1  What is Internet of Things?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and the Internet.

A thing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low -- or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network. So far, the Internet of Things has been most closely associated with machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in manufacturing and power, oil and gas utilities. Products built with M2M communication capabilities are often referred to as being smart. ( smart label, smart meter, smart grid sensor)

1.2  Devices

The way devices communicate with gateways/internet could be based on:

Ethernet, WiFi using TCP/IP or UDP, MQTT, http, CoAP

UART, SPI/ I2C

Near Field Communication(NFC)

Zigbee and mesh networks in RF, blue tooth

Modbus

Low Power Bluetooth technology

SRF

2.0 Challenges

We have to address the obstacles to the connection to the devices - Firewalls, Network Address Translation (NAT) and other obstacles on the way.

There could be issues in connectivity of devices due to internet connectivity, battery life, RF interferences, simply being switched off, physical security/damage etc.,

There is plethora of protocols, vendors in this space. Inter-operability among these and derive the required data from these could be a challenge.

3.0 Key Requirements:

·        Device management - remote provisioning and upgrade of firmware/software.

·        Device security is mandatory - only the authorized personnel should have access to the information from the devices. Also, lock and isolation of impaired/hijacked devices should be supported.

·        Ability to process live stream of data and apply configurable complex event processing/rules on the incoming data to respond real time/near real time.

·        Support for time series data and transformation of data to the granularity required for reporting.

·        Leverage existing open/marketplace API's, technologies - should have a loosely coupled architecture, where we can plug/play/replace these components.

·        Multi modal communication API's - support for tablets, mobiles, web applications and other third party integration.

·        We need an architecture that scales well (horizontal) with addition of devices; should have high availability and fault tolerance features. Should support cloud hosting.

4.0 Architecture:

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4.1 Device Layer:

Sensors, Actuators, Bar code reader, RFID readers, wearable, smart meters, GPS locators, mobile phones, google glass, biometric sensors, drones are examples of devices in this layer. They communicate in various protocols covered in Section 1.2. Gateways can act as protocol translators, data aggregators, data cache (where connectivity is intermittent).

4.2 Data Ingest/Processing Layer:

The data from the devices is accessed over various protocols as mentioned above and protocols with lowest overhead over payload - MQTT and CoAP are clear winners on this account.

We can have an implementation of Agent Hub running in the device/gateway layer, which would collect the data from devices and send it over to a Central Registry (which is the case with Bosch M2M platform) in the ingest layer. 

We need a filter, adapter, transformation are part of data ingestion; Complex event processing (CEP), Business process Modeling (BPM), Business Rules Modeling (BRM) are in the Processing layer. A pub/sub model is best for handling data at this layer. Choices could be ActiveMQ, RabbitMQ or cloud bases offerings such as SQS. CEP is available in many flavors - open source tools such as WS02, ESPER; enterprise tools from Oracle etc; also, Storm/Spark from Hadoop world. Data in flight Analytics using R or any other similar tool can be done in this layer. Volume/Variety will decide the selection of tools in this layer.

4.3 Data Storage and Access Layer

SQL and NoSQL data bases are candidates for storing data. Depending on the volume HDFS can be used as well.

Recommended data access to the consuming applications is over REST API. This layer of abstraction enables access across different data sources.

4.4 Applications

Employee health and Safety, Remote Monitoring, Track and Trace, Traceability, Predictive Maintenance, Risk/Fraud Analytics, Digital Farming, Industry 4.0, Connected Vehicle Technology, Smart Home/Factory/Warehouse/City are some of the applications in this space.

4.5 QoS/Monitoring

he Quality of Service is across all the layers - it should support non-real time, soft real time, hard real time depending on the application requirement. Architecture should support measuring the latency, data loss, ability to handle duplicate data, late arriving data, identify error in data. Instrumentation should be provided in all the services in the system that is capable of reporting the health, resource utilization, efficiency etc.,

 4.6 Security

Security risks associated with using inherent internet and risks that are associated with IoT devices should be addressed. Best practices such as encryption, Identity and access management with OAuth/OAuth2 (tokens rather than username/password) are suggested. XACML based Attribute/Policy based Access control are appropriate.   

5.0 Conclusion:

Posted by Chandramohan Subbiah at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

That the Business Intelligence world is being disrupted with new technologies is now common knowledge. However, very few businesses & their BI groups have a holistic view and roadmap to embrace this change. All have few specific new capabilities in mind and here is an opportunity to apply the Infosys 'New and Renew' Strategy to enable BI in your organizations take the next leap.

So, firstly let's assess what are we hearing from various stakeholders and the wider BI market:

Our Customers:  We need BI to be agile, responsive, trustworthy, cost efficient, easy to adopt and make the right strategic business impact quickly

Infosys Experience from Engagements:  Need to Reduce time to insights, bring in some unique assets to accelerate programs, Align customers to industry best practices and need for clear engagement charter in terms of business value and capabilities within an agile delivery model.

Industry Analysts:  Analysts like Gartner, Forrester emphasize need for different pricing models, expand BI usage thru' the enterprise, leverage cloud/big data/mobility/advanced visualization etc. They expect avg. BI market growth to be 10% ; 70% of which will still be IT controlled;  Analytics to command 20% of those budgets and rest on Query/integration and reporting.

Given these key learning's, the new vision at Manufacturing BI is 'To transform our customers from today's data driven to Analytics driven Enterprises enabled by Rapid, Deep and Actionable Insights'.

In order to enable 'Rapid, Deep and Actionable Insights', the following offerings are being planned:

Analytics Driven Enterprises: The goal is to help enterprises transform from traditional data driven to analytics driven organizations. This is to be enabled by an Analytics adoption framework that helps make the right analytics investments that matter, 'Leverage-your-data' initiatives to take a deep look at available data & innovate to make strategic use of it and Predictive & Descriptive modeling services driven actionable insights for Manufacturing & Hi-Tech relevant areas like Supply chain optimizations, Personalized customer service, sales, marketing and finance analytics functions.

Responsive Business Intelligence:  This includes unique data exploration Services, Self-service BI capabilities, Persona based KPI solutions, Adv. Visualization tools driven data analysis, Reporting Factories, Data Virtualization and agile delivery models.

Big Data Enabled Insights: The above vision of transforming organizations into Analytics Driven Organization will be deepened by leveraging Infosys Information Platform (IIP)  for Predictive maintenance, Manufacturing Quality Analytics, Strategic sales opportunity management, IoT driven usage & health analytics, Agro research, Intelligent Asset mgmt., Customer insights etc.

For any of the above to be impactful, Our goal is to help customers have a solid backbone in terms of 'Amplified & Efficient Data Operations'. Some of the offerings towards these are:

Landscape Modernization:  Help our customers renew/modernize their existing landscapes with  BI tools consolidation and re-platforming, upgrades, big data migrations, clean & conformed Master data mgmt. strategies, Data quality improvements and implementation accelerators for productive COE's.

High Performance Computing: Leverage high performance tools based on in-memory , columnar stores, other No-SQL stores to renew existing systems needing such high performance e.g supply chain visibility, Financial consolidations, Just-in-time offers, Asset management and real-time enterprise data warehouses.

Amplified Data Warehousing: Existing data warehouses augmented with Hadoop based platforms to reduce turnaround time for multi-structured, high velocity datasets needed for insights. This can also be leveraged to reduce the fast escalating cost of data warehousing.

Manufacturing BI believes this dual strategy of transforming organizations from data driven to Analytics driven enterprises and creating an amplified & efficient data backbone will help next gen enterprises stay ahead in the marketplace & outperform today's run-of-the-mill BI Maturity curves. 

Posted by Arunabha Mookerjea at 3:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

 Author: Alpesh Chauhan, CRM Lead Consultant, Manufacturing, Infosys Ltd.

Proactive service maintenance is not just limited to preventive maintenance but it is also includes predictive maintenance. Service management is usually associated with negative experience as customer contacts service provider when product has some issues. But it can be turned in to positive experience if services are handled carefully and promptly, which can result in lesser asset down time and faster service resolution. That's why, it can be an opportunity for service provider to convert bad customer experience into a good experience. Of course, it is not easy task and risk is always high as if service provider is not able to provide better service, customer is gone forever and he may provide negative feedback for your products/services.

Continue reading "Predictive service maintenance - A step ahead" »

Posted by Alpesh Narendra Chauhan at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It is a well-known fact that one of the top most challenges that the auto industry is facing in pushing the connected car is in getting customers to pay for connectivity services within the car. A recent McKinsey report on connected car states through its survey that, though more than 25% of buyers had prioritized internet connectivity over features such as mileage and engine power, not many were ready to pay for smartphone integration or for in-car subscription services. This is a deadlock that will hinder growth and cast unnecessary apprehensions during this new technology adoption. OEMs will want to pass the additional (and recurring) connectivity cost and subscription charges to the customer and customers would want everything for free. This is a classical stand-off as seen umpteen number of times with new technology. And there's always one winner - the customer.

I am reminded of the TV show on National Geographic channel about the migration of wild beast in the Sahara. There comes a point when the first batch of wild beast standing at the edge of the river and staring at the hungry crocodiles and surging river are no longer able to contain the push and pressure of the millions that have gathered behind them and urging them to move on past the clear and present danger. Automotive companies are facing the same pressure when it comes to emerging technology like Internet of Things (IOT) or Connected Cars. There will be a breach and in spite of the data privacy concerns or the payment terms for connectivity and subscriptions, the technology surge will ensure that some or the other company finds the will and means to reach out to mass customers. It is hence, in the best interest of all auto OEMs to acknowledge this change and make it easier and convenient for customers to be part of the connected car story immediately.

What this means is that auto OEMs will have to work in close coordination with telecom service providers to provide internet connectivity within cars at bare minimum, if not zero, cost. There is also a thing or two to learn from the telecom service providers. In the beginning, mobile charges were exorbitant and mobile phones were scarce. But once the industry expanded and the virtues of using a cell phone became evident to customers, adoption rates increased and prices crashed. Same goes for data plans well. Telecom providers attracted and encouraged early adopters to use internet on their smart phones by providing lucrative pricing. Once the customers poured in by the millions and were hooked on, there was no turning back and telecom companies could then re-look at their pricing model and focus on profitability. I think auto OEMs will have to do something similar with pricing for their connected car services and subscriptions.

Our cars of the future would definitely be connected and auto OEMs may have to bear the initial cost of connectivity in addition to spends on R&D around connected cars. Once customers are able to see and experience the benefits of in-car connectivity, OEMs will be able to better harness the power of data to provide further applications and services which will make life easier and make car driving a better user experience. Stay connected!

Posted by Avinash Kamat at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Absurd! Any number of times you read it. How can 'I need a car, so let's go buy a cell phone' ever make sense? But times are changing with rapid technological advancements and so is our outlook towards life's accessories. And what better example of that, can one find other than one's car and cell phone. They are arguably the two largest social statements for folks around the world. In an earlier era, it was probably just the car that made a social statement. But today, the car that you drive and cell phone that you carry define who you are in today's digitally categorized society. But how are the two even related to each other? We typically use a cell phone to call our friends and to surf the internet whereas the car takes us from Point A to Point B. Let's see how the two will converge very soon.

In our fast paced lives, digital connectivity is playing an important role of not only creating a new economy but also redefining our perspective on traditional 'things'. A 'connected car' is much more than just a 'car' and a 'smart phone' is much more than a 'cell phone'. Technology companies like Apple and Google have realized the immense potential in the marriage of these two and is one of the prime reason you will find these two giants foraying into the car space with integrated solutions that will eventually change the way how you perceive a car. Many people do not realize this, but one spends more time looking at the 'insides' of a car than the external shapes & contours. Hence the car experience judgment is bound to be more skewed towards what one perceives as an experience sitting inside while driving rather than the external design beauty. Given not much has happened to enriching the internal experience (barring a few luxury brands), it was an opportunity to be tapped for Apple and Google - the masters at understanding what consumers want.

Apple has CarPlay and Google has launched Android Auto. Essentially, these technology companies are bringing in a new experience center for drivers. Once you plug an Apple or Android phone into the car, the display unit on the car dashboard gives you an Apple or Android experience. The display unit of the car turns into a feature rich extension of the phone and the experience turns from an unattractive car display head unit into a sleek and contemporary smart phone display. Extending the smart phone experience to the car dashboard is the digital change that Apple and Google are bringing in and it will cause disruption in the sales and marketing strategies of prospective car buyers. Of course, this is going to be available on select brands and models only but this is just the beginning where your smart phone has started taking over your car through a simple integration at the display unit layer. However, what it also means is that the compatibility of your car and your smart phone is soon going to define the experience that you intend to have in your car. It makes life simpler with a single consistent digital experience across multiple personal assets. Which brings us back to the title of this blog.

You now know why that smartphone became so relevant to your car purchase decision. How exciting can that be?

Posted by Avinash Kamat at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several government and industry regulations like product performance, environment, safety and corporate governance are being made mandatory across the Industrial world.
In order to comply with legal  and environmental regulations on concerns like  hazardous substances. All  aircraft, automotive, electronics manufacturers and many others are required to keep extensive materials data. The number and types of materials used in the industry have also increased. It thus became important for manufacturers to have knowledge of restricted and conflict materials. Moreover, as there are high costs involved in collating, storing, and maintaining such information, An International Material Data System(IMDS) was created by HP with a consortium/association of manufacturers to make all data related and needed by supplier economically accessible. In this System, security policies protect all proprietary information but other Common information is shared with all OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers).
In this way, IMDS enables OEMs in data management & analysis of all material information for regulatory compliance and for improvement in design.
Ever since IMDS has been operational, over 2.5 lakh user IDs were issued to apprx. one lakh IMDS companies. It has now become the standard for the automotive & related industries. All Tier 1 suppliers have a responsibility to submit all necessary information in the IMDS database.

Introduction
The IMDS is an internet-based database system collectively developed and maintained by  EDS ( HP company) with several automobile companies namely Porsche, VW ,Daimler, Ford, Opel, Audi, BMW, and Volvo. This system has a free-of-charge usage by all automotive suppliers for vehicle details & content reporting, recyclability and the reuse requirements. It tracks chemical ingredients of parts and assemblies across the entire automotive OEM supply chain.
Through the data collected by the all automotive supply chain stakeholders, OEM's are able to comply with the  worldwide ELV directives, REACH,SVHC, RRR and EU regulations related to material handling and disposal. IMDS & HP Compliance Data Exchange (CDX) thus make the prohibitive cost of collecting and maintaining the data easier.

Functioning
The IMDS is similar to the previous system of paper based  material data sheet form (VDA expenditure 2, system 16: Substances contained in externally purchased parts).  Compared to the former method, OEMs need to indicate not just the banned hazardous materials like Cr6 / Hg  etc.  but also all constituent substances in the material data sheet (MDS) of the IMDS with a resolution of 1 gram or more.

A 100% disclosure of substances in each part or device is provided by suppliers. The onus to share data can be delegated to Tier1 or Tier2 suppliers. OEMs collect data of all automotive parts irrespective of the usability or its ultimate sales point. With a single click suppliers can analyze all the substances/chemicals which are part of the component.

IMDS sorts the data to provide a full material overview via different languages and part-numbering systems built into the product. It is also web-accessible, highly password-protected and not dependent on any system architecture, thus becoming an international portal for material data information for manufacturing industry.

System Requirements
PC with internet access , Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5.0 or higher, Initial company registration over EDS Helpdesk, Initial user registration.

Process Flow of IMDS working:

Continue reading "International Material Data System- A collective effort of OEMs in environmental protection" »

Posted by Deepak Kaul at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Vivek Moreshwar Ruikar at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

3D printing technology, otherwise known as additive manufacturing, is evolving to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of the manufacturing industry. There seems to be a sea of opportunities for this technology in the Aerospace and Automotive sectors due to their need for high-value complex part replacements, the periodicity of maintenance and the need to reduce inventories. While most of us believe that this technology might still be at a nascent stage, we ought to take a closer look at its adoption in the high-tech and industrial manufacturing sectors. The US Department of Defense, supported by a consortium of private companies, has recognized this as a key growth area and announced plans to fund 2 new world class manufacturing innovation centers in the region this year. With the technology to print living tissues today, it makes us think that 'Dolly' could have just been printed out without much ado.  

The IT industry sees a gamut of opportunities in the 3D printing arena, particularly in the areas of digitization, engineering and supply chain management reconfiguration. The Infosys whitepaper titled The Future of Maintenance discusses 3D printing as a solution for optimization of maintenance costs which will help flatten supply chain and procurement expenditure on industrial machinery and capital goods.  The entire blueprint of the component procurement space will have to be redrafted by substituting these revenues with the sale of custom specifications for each part 3D printed at the end customer location. Gone will be the days when a customer places an order for a part and waits patiently for door delivery with an additional day's wait for a service mechanic to assemble the part. If you perceived Amazon's superfast drone or the Rolls Royce Cargo Drone ships to be your solution, wouldn't 3D printing make the process much simpler - or not. That's quite a debate. 

If you thought that the demand for customization and shorter delivery timelines have brought our production hubs closer to home turf from low cost centers like China, you are at a greater advantage having a 3D printer installed at your production house. Companies are now embracing backward integration strategies by turning into part manufacturers, replacing their OEM suppliers fractionally to start with. The cost of purchasing a 3D printer along with the raw materials and IP will be offset by added energy efficiency, less to no wastage of materials used in the process, the elimination of shipping costs and the ability to create prototypes that would have otherwise consumed expensive resources and larger timelines.

Are we moving to an era where construction, manufacturing, design, engineering and medical care are all going to be a DIY affair? It's too soon to assume, but we sure are inching closer.    

Posted by Boney Joseph at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by James Dale at 9:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rapid Urbanization and information empowered customers are driving modernization and innovation in the manufacturing space. Increased customization, shorter product lifecycles have led to the evolution of high performance supply chains, though this raises challenges exposing them to diverse risks and disruptions at various stages of the value chain. Besides, increased regulatory pressures and cut throat competition in a globalized economy means supply chains also need be to cost efficient and transparent for manufacturers to survive. Technology today is playing a key role in enabling supply chain modernization to meet above challenges. But, Modernization is not just about responding to change but also leading change and technology is also playing that part to a "T". The rise of the digital consumer with proliferation of web and ability to process Big Data has ensured that manufacturers can ignore technology trends like advanced analytics, real time data processing, social media, cloud, mobility and machine to machine communication (Internet of Things) at their own peril. Having said that companies need to evaluate and manage technology by striking a fine balance between business value and disruption.  This is where you would need a smart integrator like Infosys with a proven track record in enterprise solutions and disruptive technologies, who can help you transition and transform your business processes to get on that path.

 SAP is the leader in Enterprise Business application software and this year's Sapphire is all about the manufacturers' journey from Industrialization, followed with Modernization and finally powered with Digitization. While we all are eager to actively contribute and listen from market leaders in the event, we briefly elaborate below some of the advanced solutions areas in SAP where we have invested and made rapid strides to enable manufacturers in their "smart" journey.

Continue reading "Infosys at Sapphire 2014: 'Enterprise now' for the smart manufacturer" »

Posted by Sandeep Panda at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Auto OEMS and Tier 1 suppliers tell me that in year 2020 I won't have to drive my car, it will drive itself. Cool, I say, but will it also pay for its own fuel? For a country that has always imported oil, fuel efficiency of cars is what most Indians think of when evaluating a car. While the whole world goes gaga over autonomous/self-driving technology, pardon me if I have my eyes fixated over the fuel gauge and am wondering "What's the fuel efficiency of this car?"

Connected vehicle technology (CVT) is fast changing the automotive landscape and we will soon see the modern yet everyday cars flaunting this latest technology. CVT will allow you to remotely lock/unlock car doors; start the car air conditioning; point out which friends of yours are sitting at the Starbucks outlet you are about to cross while driving and get you over there with a voice command while navigating you through the back alley (since the main street is blocked for road maintenance). An advanced version of this technology is going behind the autonomous/self-driving cars that are being currently tested. Phew! That's a lot of intelligence for a car. But snazzy features apart, what does that mean for an everyday car user?

We can all imagine the coolness factor with the technology around autonomous/self-driving cars. It means such 'connected cars' will have the capability to drive on their own with limited human intervention. Wow again! But just take a step back and think about it. It also means that these cars will have a ton of sensors and intelligence along with internet connectivity that will continuously tell the car on what speed to travel, when to accelerate and when to decelerate - all the while keeping safety in perspective. With this ability to predict, instruct and execute acceleration and deceleration, cars will have a lot more information to decide on the mode of driving. Also, this mode is more likely to be 'Economy' rather than 'Sport' mode which means that the cars would run in the right gear at the right speed for the optimum time. What does that mean for our everyday user? Voila! Higher fuel efficiency.

We all know that we are not the best fuel conservators in the world when we drive. Everyone has a different style of driving which leads to different fuel efficiency scores recorded on the same car. So, when a car manufacturer states a fuel efficiency of say 23 mpg (miles per gallon), we can safely bet that we will not be able to achieve that all the time. It may be about 15%-25% lesser than that on a normal run. But with autonomous cars, it's the technology that will be driving the car and it will be more prone to consistent and optimal driving than humans. There won't be any hard accelerations or hard braking, and change of gears will be based on actual traffic rather than driver perception of the actual condition. All this will mean optimal driving at optimal fuel efficiency. This will be a good start and is a wonderful takeaway for our future generations who are anyway looking at the bleak prospect of depleting natural resources.

So in the year 2020, I may be driving an autonomous car and I will have to pay for the fuel myself but connected vehicle technology will help me make that visit to the gas station less frequent. Cheers to that!

Posted by Avinash Kamat at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

To add to these woes, globalization, increasing customer expectations, and stringent local and global regulations have added risk and complexity to the supply chains of today. In order to regain ground, we need to think of reforms that would help us get back on the growth bandwagon. As a starting point, it would be great to see investments in the field of education that would lead to the creation of educational programs to help meet the growing job demand in this industry.  Institutes that create such focused training programs need to be cognizant of what the sector really needs and be abreast of the latest developments in the industry and the best practices to be followed in order to augment its growth. Unfortunately, the research and insights, that are currently available for working employees and students, do not draw a parallel with what the industry wants. We are looking for quality education that can help engage our ignited minds and flare up the innovation quotient. We certainly would not want redundancy.

The recently formed partnership between Infosys and the USC Marshall School of Business is a classic example.Infosys will be closely associated with the curricular and research activities of the University's Global Supply Chain Management center.  The specialized post graduate degree on Supply chain management, from the university, will be the first officially integrated Master's program on supply chain management strategies that meets its mission of Education, Networking, and Advanced Research. This course will focus on advancing global supply chain management for a sector which is vying to employ over a million qualified professionals by the end of 2016, in the US alone.   

As part of the team from Infosys who have partnered with the university, we will be running several programs on thought leadership, industry relevant education and co-ordinate with industry experts, organizations, trade bodies and local authorities, for the center's activities. Infosys's supply chain practice would gain immensely, from the advanced research and networking activities of the USC's supply chain center. In line with its corporate social responsibility commitment, Infosys will also actively contribute to the humanitarian projects undertaken by the center.

This specialized program, will be perceived as a saving grace in the supply chain industry, and is also seen as the educational sector's proactive response to demand that's driven by the industry need for leaders who can drive growth.

Posted by Sandeep Panda at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Mitesh Patel at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The customer wants to buy customized products.The seller wants to sell from existing inventory.The classic dilemma exists even today. But in this internet age where information is easy and choice is abundant, the tide is strongly in favor of the customer.  Driven by demanding customers, increasing competition, and a recession weary economy, manufacturers of 21^st century do not seem to have a choice than to move to customized offerings. The solution to this problem though, is not new. Mass customization or the business strategy of selling of customized products at a large scale by producing them at mass manufacturing costs, has been in the news for more than a couple of decades.  As the demand is now met from build to order stock, this scenario leads to lower accumulation of unsold inventory. So what has led manufacturers to be slow on adopting this compelling proposition till now? In the coming sections we will touch upon some of the challenges and explore whether innovations like crowdsourcing and 3D printing may finally provide the impetus leading to extensive adoption of mass customization among manufacturers. While the last century was dedicated to mass manufacturing, will the current one be known for mass customization?

One of the main challenges in adopting this philosophy is the multifold increase in number of product variants. This presents challenges not just in designing flexible manufacturing units, re-usable product structures but also on the marketing side to promote this huge variety. While options may entice customers, it presents the risk of confusing him, if the variety is not presented appropriately. Mass customization can very quickly become mass confusion leading to failure of an otherwise customer centric approach. Choice is good but too when customers have to choose from too many attributes which they don't understand and value, it leads to frustration and can have an adverse impact on the buying decision.  Take the case of mobile phones; there are so many models but few which are top selling.

One of the other big problems is that customers are not ready to wait long for customized products. While earlier a customer would be ready to wait for 60 days for a made to order car in Germany, this has now reduced to around 40 days. In an industry sector like automotive which is heavily dependent upon its suppliers for its manufacturing process, mass customization is not just about bringing a change within the company but also selecting the right set of supply chain partners. Apart from design flexibility, the increase in number of variants leads to operational burden too by increasing the complexity in accounting structures, inventory tracking and order processing.

The multitude of problems also has seen some pragmatic solutions. The recent advances in information technology have led to decrease in cost and increase in accuracy of handling transactional, accounting data and the ability to handle complex production schedules.  Advanced manufacturing systems have enabled manufacturers to adopt lean manufacturing, design modular product structures to facilitate mass customization. Distributed manufacturing and assembly is another strategy being adopted.

The ability of not just to process information but to disseminate it seamlessly has led to real time integration with suppliers thus leading to a decrease in lead time of built-to-order assemblies. The advances in visualization technology have enabled creation of online configurators which enable customers to visualize their final configured product without the manufacturer having to build it or keep it in stock.  The virtual building of the product from attributes engages the customer and takes care in reducing "mass confusion" to some extent. Another innovative practice which directly addresses the current problem of huge inventories (especially cars) is the Virtual build to order (VBTO). Online car configurators are able to search matches to selected configuration from existing inventory across retailers and factory systems, hence meeting the demand for customized products without actually manufacturing a new vehicle.  You have recommendation engines incorporated within the configurators which suggest near matches to customer inputs hence assisting him or her to make a quick choice if he or she is not ready to wait.

All the above developments are great but only leading to incremental adoption of the mass customization philosophy. The reason is that it still does not substantially mitigate the risk of failure against the benefit. What if you discover that the variable attributes you introduce to your product or service are not the ones which the customers really value? By that time the manufacturer would have made substantial investment in redesigning manufacturing setup, driving change in organization, partners, marketing and IT systems. The sunk cost, capacity underutilization and inventory from lack of sales could lead to a shutdown. In this world of fast changing needs, market research based on historical data can hardly provide that kind of customer insight to guarantee success. This is where new innovations like "crowdsourcing" and "3D printing" can break the barrier.

Crowdsourcing or the practice of involving a large set of people especially over the internet with an intention to obtain ideas, opinions or services, allows manufacturers to involve the customer in the design stage itself. Advancement of web 2.0 technologies enables integration of visual software (3D) within collaboration platforms leading to a very interactive form of co-design between the prospective consumer and manufacturer. Advanced analytics software derives meaning out of unstructured comments from consumer and thus indicates key insights to manufacturer which otherwise would not have been possible via traditional means. With this manufacturers are reasonably sure about the key attributes of value, product variants before moving to a mass customization approach. They no longer follow suit what competitors are offering and have an opportunity to lead the game rather than catch up to it. Allowing people to participate creates a positive vibe for the brand too. Crowdsourcing also has a role to play post the manufacture of the product i.e. in the buying decision. For example a customer can build a virtual car using an online car configurator and post it on a crowdsourcing platform provided by the OEM. Based on recommendations, likes/dislikes from others he/she could make the buying decision. 

Another innovation which is hugely helping the cause for mass customization is 3D printing. With the advent of cheap 3D printers small manufacturers can quickly move to prototyping to final product. Large manufacturers also benefit as they do not have to spend a whole lot of time and money in prototyping anymore. A good use case is in the automotive aftermarket. OEMs or savvy players from the un-organized sector can provide a platform where do it yourself customers can take the core-design of the accessories and parts and can customize it. Subsequently the customized designs could be 3D printed and delivered to the customer.

By now we have seen the challenges manufacturers face in adopting a mass customization approach. There seems no single method to success except that manufacturers have to treat mass customization as a business strategy rather than a manufacturing one. But with innovations like crowdsourcing and 3D printing addressing the fundamental risks which prevented the adoption, I believe we would see more companies opting the mass customization route profitably.

What do you think??

Posted by Sandeep Panda at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Come to think of it! How many times do you keep staring at the glass panel behind the steering wheel? Until the autonomous car is on the road for you and me, we will have to continue to watch the road, enjoy the scenery and then toggle the infotainment cluster for navigation, weather report, radio, music playlist, climate controls etc. But check out the tachometer or temperature indicator? Nah! Not many times, right? Thought so!

Posted by Avinash Kamat at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Continue reading "Technology Trends of 2014 and How They Apply to the Manufacturing Industry" »

Posted by Rakhi Makad at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In one of my earlier Blog posts (E-Commerce in B2B Arena: The wheels are moving albeit slow) we talked about the latest Ecommerce trends and B2B ecommerce. A lot has happened since then, let us have a look at some of the developments!

Here are a few interesting facts involving B2B eCommerce which are getting the Manufacturers all excited and charged up:

1) Sheer size of B2B eCommerce: B2B eCommerce market in the US alone is roughly double the size of the US B2C eCommerce market. 

2) Rising Mobility: Mobile traffic is gaining traction and will be almost one- fourth of the overall business Internet traffic in a few years.

3) Profitable Online customers: It is becoming more and more profitable to migrate offline customers online fuelling a better and fatter net spend.

4) Reducing support Costs: It is much more cost effective to support the consumers who have moved online providing better savings on support activities.

5) Greater penetration: B2B companies can also service small accounts online effectively which could have been a cost burden in the offline scenario, thus profitably adding new customers.

Continue reading "B2B Ecommerce Circa 2014- Demystifying the Hottest Trends PART 1" »

Posted by Varun Chhibber at 3:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Technology and gadgets have always caught man's fancy since centuries. And cars - always a hotbed for new cool technology - have historically pulled more customers into dealer showrooms whenever there is an exciting feature to showcase. Hence, it is no surprise that more and more automotive companies are focusing on building cool connected car apps for the technology trendy customer of today.

The usual consumer apps in a connected car are GPS navigation, traffic alerts, internet radio or music, search engines, internet browsers, remote door lock/unlock, etc. All these are consumer focused and will heavily rely on transactions between the car, the driver and the World Wide Web. However, enterprise is often the last place for automotive customers to focus upon. The reasons are evident:

• Consumer apps create better selling and marketing points since their benefits can be fully perceived by customers
• Building mobile applications is easier and faster as compared to enterprise applications
• Compatibility and integration are enterprise challenges that are comparatively easier to resolve on the consumer app side
• The customer need for ubiquitous connectivity can be met more satisfyingly with consumer apps in cars

Let's face it. It's now a given that the sprint race would be won by consumer apps. But does that leave out enterprise apps completely?

The answer is a big No. For the amount of data that a car can generate, the analytics wealth hidden within that data is of unimaginable value. Imagine if the enterprise (automotive manufacturer) can forewarn you of an impending breakdown and book a service appointment. Imagine if based on someone else's recent warranty report, your car gets recalled earlier than usual and thus prevents any accident of breakdown for anyone using the same batch model. Imagine if your car broadcasts a lease payment notification as soon as you start the engine and thus helps you to maintain your credit ratings. There are many more benefits of using the power of the enterprise to make the driver experience enjoyable and stress free. No one wants to have a breakdown in the middle of the road or mess up their credit rating unnecessarily.

Cars can be connected to enterprises using a connected car platform and can allow millions of bytes of car data to be analyzed using big data and analytics. The output of this can then be used to tailor the services back to the car or the car driver. Unlike consumer apps that are more or less a one-on-one interaction between the car and the car driver, enterprise apps have a wider use of big data and analytics. These help automotive companies to better understand the car's behavior and pass this learning to other cars such that timely intervention can make the car experience more enjoyable.

Posted by Avinash Kamat at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today it is easy to give an opinion and there is no stopping us. Nearly one in every four people use social media and in some of the developing and developed countries, around 70% of the adult population spends more than 2 hours per day on the same. That's a lot of time to say a lot of things, things which matter to marketers. Hence companies are investing a lot into mining this huge amount of information on networking sites, blogs, and discussion forums to gain insights into underlying customer sentiment about their brand, customer service, new products, customer behavior and underlying needs. 

Very often sentiment analytics is either considered as a topic within text analytics or text analytics is considered as the approach to sentiment analytics.This may be because, today, a large source of social online data is considered as text. But, the definition could be quite restrictive. More than 65000 videos are uploaded to YouTube alone per day and 6 billion hours of video are watched on it each month. More than 25000 photos are uploaded to Flickr every minute. With this huge number of videos and photos being shared and watched online, companies and analysts can no longer afford to ignore this data and stick to text alone.

If not statistics, we can also look to intuitive logic to build the case for looking beyond text. Sentiment to a layman would be polarity of an opinion. To judge the polarity, words are not enough, the emotion behind the words matter. And emotions are better reflected through tone and gesture. Remember what we learnt at college? "We communicate more effectively through body language than words" and that "a picture is worth a thousand words". Now, which is a better measure of sentiment - "how long a person smiled" in a video or "the number of smileys" in a transcript?

The time has come to move from a traditional single mode (text) approach to a multimode approach. But, are we ready for it? While, there is a lot of research done in labs/institutions to prove the feasibility and superiority of multimode approach, there is hardly any example in real life. One of the main challenges in non-textual data is the variation in representing the same meaning as against words, thus making it almost impossible to model. The other hurdle is that, even though a model is designed (example: Face detection), its applicability also depends upon the quality of the image. In real life people use home web cameras to upload videos or photos and there is an inherent lack of clarity in them. The third challenge is the size of the data, which would be many times more than a text scenario.

It seems we are far from ready, and the challenges are overwhelming. In order to progress on this, we need to take baby steps:

1.      Focus on specific areas where a multimode approach can be a differentiator over text and bring in a lot more value, for e.g. lie detection, sarcasm identification, and real time voice analytics and demonstrate its usage in real life context.

2.      Research on managing the huge size of data needs to continue.

3.      While the ideal state is "reliable automated sentiment analytics on multimode data", we should look into innovative manual ways to do the same to enjoy the benefits now.

For example we could use crowdsourcing to distribute and manually categorize sentiment on a huge set of photos from Flickr or videos from you-tube or audio files from a call center over the internet. After all the quality of sentiment scoring a human being can do is likely to be superior to any algorithm based logic.

What do you think should be our way ahead?

Posted by Sandeep Panda at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here a few interesting observations, check them out:

 Globally, almost half of those with online access use social media to enable purchase decisions 

 Almost one third of the consumers do tend to act on a promotional message on a company's social media pages

 More than half of the US online consumers use YouTube and other social media channels to browse and research an organization

 Facebook influences the way people made purchase decisions based on their exposure to ads and comments

Continue reading "Unravelling Social Commerce Age: The Dawn of the Social Consumer" »

Posted by Varun Chhibber at 5:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other day I had a friend car pool with me to office from home. We were having a lively discussion on a common interest subject and out of habit I had the FM radio turned on as well. The incessant honking by the motorists on the road only added to the audio decibels around us and it was all getting extremely noisy and insufferably loud. I noticed that all these events were causing a distraction and actually causing a slight dip in my attention to driving the car. This made me very worried.

We are all getting increasingly surrounded by technology in our ecosystem and there is still a hungry demand for further ubiquitous and seamless connectivity within vehicles from consumers. Decidedly so, auto OEMs are being continuously pushed to find a balance between providing 'relevant, important and critical' applications within the car vis-à-vis controlling driver distractions. However, driver distraction is now at the center of all connected car woes and is the most talked about topic at conferences, events and client interactions. More and more people are opposing (or at least voicing concern) to any technology that is going to add to the distraction strain on the driver while driving; which takes me to the moot point of this blog - Can we avoid driver distraction in connected cars?

Undoubtedly, this is the elephant in the room and we cannot avoid embracing new technology and applications within cars and other vehicles. What we could do is devise innovative ideas on how to minimize driver distraction. One way to do this is by classifying what is 'relevant, important and critical' for the car-on-the-road ecosystem. Having prognostic ability built in the car to avoid a mid-drive break down can be termed as relevant to the driver whereas an emergency call (eCall) may be critical for sending EMS to the site. From a consumer perspective, being seamlessly connected to Facebook or Twitter within the car could be important. Hence a matrix should be formed with weighted average taken for all the applications and features that can have an impact on driver distraction. Once this is done, we could then decide what takes priority over the other and then use technology to regulate the communication. For example, an eCall will take precedence over the audio navigation instruction. Route navigation can take precedence over FM radio. A reminder alert can be timed to be broadcast within 5 seconds of engine start and so on. The whole experience within the car will have to be re-analyzed taking situational events into consideration before adopting new features.

Hence, prioritization is going to be critical to decide on which technology or application takes precedence over the other. This will definitely help minimize distraction and allow drivers to handle and manage the seamless connectivity within the connected car. Do you agree?

Posted by Avinash Kamat at 5:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)