BriefingsDirect Transcripts: manufacturing

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Friday, February 22, 2019

Industrial-Strength Wearables Combine with Collaboration Cloud to Bring Anywhere Expertise to Intelligent-Edge Work

Transcript of a discussion on how workers in harsh conditions are gaining ease in accessing and interacting with the best intelligence thanks to cloud-enabled, hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computers.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories.

Gardner

Our next industrial-edge innovation use-case examines how RealWear, Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) MyRoom combine to provide workers in harsh conditions ease in accessing and interacting with the best intelligence. We’ll now learn how a hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computer solves the last few feet issue for delivering a business’ best data and visual assets to some of its most critical onsite workers.

Here to describe the new high-water mark for wearable augmented collaboration technologies are Jan Josephson, Sales Director for EMEA at RealWear. Welcome to BriefingsDirect, Jan.

Jan Josephson: Thank you, very much. I’m happy to be here.

Gardner: We’re also joined by John “JT” Thurgood, Director of Sales for UK, Ireland, and Benelux at RealWear. Welcome, JT.

John “JT” Thurgood: Thank you, Dana, it’s good to be here.

Gardner: A variety of technologies have come together to create the RealWear solution. Tell us why nowadays a hands-free, wearable computer needs to support multimedia and collaboration solutions to get the job done.

Hands-free help

Thurgood: Over time, our industrial workers have moved through a digitization journey as they find the best ways to maintain and manage equipment in the field. They need a range of tools and data to do that. So, it could be an engineer wearing personal protective equipment in the field. He may be up on scaffolding. He typically needs a big bundle of paperwork, such as visual schematics, and all kinds of authorization documents. This is typically what an engineer takes into the field. What we are trying to do is make his life easier.

Thurgood

You can imagine it. An engineer gets to an industrial site, gets permission to be near the equipment, and has his schematics and drawings he takes into that often-harsh environment. His hands are full. He’s trying to balance and juggle everything while trying to work his way through that authorization process prior to actually getting on and doing the job – of being an engineer or a technician.

We take that need for physical documentation away from him and put it on an Android device, which is totally voice-controlled and hands-free. A gyroscope built into the device allows specific and appropriate access to all of those documents. He can even freeze at particular points in the document. He can refer to it visually by glancing down, because the screen is just below eye-line.

The information is available but not interfering from a safety perspective, and it’s not stopping him from doing his job. He has that screen access while working with his hands. The speakers in the unit also help guide him via verbal instructions through whatever the process may be, and he doesn’t even have to be looking at documentation.

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He can follow work orders and processes. And, if he hits a brick wall -- he gets to a problem where even after following work processes, going through documentation, and it this still doesn’t look right -- what does he do? Well, he needs to phone a buddy, right? The way he does that is the visual remote guidance (VRG) MyRoom solution from HPE.

He gets the appropriate expert on the line, and that expert can be thousands of miles away. The expert can see what’s going on through the 16-megapixel camera on the RealWear device. And he can talk him through the problem, even in harsh conditions because there are four noise-canceling microphones on the device. So, the expert can give detailed, real-time guidance as to how to solve the problem.

You know, Dana, typically that would take weeks of waiting for an expert to be available. The cost involved in getting the guy on-site to go and resolve the issue is expensive. Now we are enabling that end-technician to get any assistance he needs, once he is at the right place, at the right time.

Gardner: What was the impetus to create the RealWear HMT-1? Was there a specific use case or demand that spurred the design?

Military inspiration, enterprise adoption

Thurgood: Our chief technology officer (CTO), Dr. Chris Parkinson, was working in another organization that was focused on manufacturing military-grade screens. He saw an application opportunity for that in the enterprise environment.

And it now has wide applicability -- whether it’s in the oil and gas industry, automotive, and construction. I’ve even had journalists wanting to use this device, like having a mobile cameraman.

He foresaw a wide range of use-cases, and so worked with a team -- with our chief executive officer (CEO), Andy Lowery -- to pull together a device. That design is IP66-rated, it’s hardened, and it can be used in all weather, from -20C to 50C, to do all sorts of different jobs.

There was nothing in the marketplace that provides these capabilities. We now have more than 10,000 RealWear devices in the field in all sorts of vertical industries.

The impetus was that there was nothing in the marketplace that provides these capabilities. People today are using iPads and tablets to do their jobs, but their hands are full. You can’t do the rest of the tasks that you may need to do using your hands.

We now have more than 10,000 RealWear devices in the field in all sorts of industrial areas. I have named a few verticals, but we’re discovering new verticals day-by-day.

Gardner: Jan, what were some of the requirements that led you to collaborate with HPE MyRoom and VRG? Why was that such a good fit?

Josephson: There are a couple of things HPE does extremely well in this field. In these remote, expert applications in particular, HPE designed their applications really well from a user experience (UX) perspective.

Josephson

At the end of the day, we have users out there and many of them are not necessarily engineers. So the UX side of an application is very important. You can’t have a lot of things clogging up your screen and making things too complicated. The interface has to be super simple.

The other thing that is really important for our customers is the way HPE does compression with their networked applications. This is essential because many times -- if you are out on an oil rig or in the middle of nowhere -- you don’t have the luxury of Wi-Fi or a 4G network. You are in the field.

The HPE solution, due to the compression, enables very high-quality video even at very-low bandwidth. This is very important for a lot of our customers. HPE is also taking their platform and enabling it to operate on-premises. That is becoming important because of security requirements. Some of the large users want a complete solution inside of their firewall.

So it’s a very impressive piece of software, and we’re very happy that we are in this partnership with HPE MyRoom.

Gardner: In effect, it’s a cloud application now -- but it can become a hybrid application, too.

Connected from the core to the edge

Thurgood: What’s really unique, too, is that HPE has now built-in object recognition within the toolset. So imagine you’re wearing the RealWear HMT-1, you’re looking at a pump, a gas filter, or some industrial object. The technology is now able to identify that object and provide you with the exact work orders and documentation related to it.

We’re now able to expand out from the historic use-case of expert remote visual guidance support into doing so much more. HPE has really pushed the boundaries out on the solution.

Gardner: It’s a striking example of the newfound power of connecting a core cloud capability with an edge device, and with full interactivity. Ultimately, this model brings the power of artificial intelligence (AI) running on a data center to that edge, and so combines it with the best of human intelligence and dexterity. It’s the best of all worlds.

JT, how is this device going to spur new kinds of edge intelligence?

Thurgood: It’s another great question because 5G is now coming to bear as well as Wi-Fi. So, all of a sudden, almost no matter where you are, you can have devices that are always connected via broadband. The connectivity will become ubiquitous.

Learn More About Software-Defined
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Now, what does that do? It means never having an offline device. All of the data, all of your Internet of Things (IoT) analytics and augmented and assisted reality will all be made available to that remote user.

So, we are looking at the superhuman versions of engineers and technicians. Historically you had a guy with paperwork. Now, if he’s always connected, he always has all the right documentation and is able to act and resolve tasks with all of the power and the assistance he needs. And it’s always available right now.

So, yes, we are going to see more intellectual value being moved down to the remote, edge user.

At RealWear, we see ourselves as a knowledge-transfer company. We want the user of this device to be the conduit through which you can feed all cloud-analyzed data. As time goes by, some of the applications will reside in the cloud as well as on the local device. For higher-order analytics there is a hell of a lot of churning of data required to provide the best end results. So, that’s our prediction.

Gardner: When you can extend the best intelligence to any expert around the world, it’s very powerful concept.

For those listening to or reading this podcast, please describe the HMT-1 device. It’s fairly small and resides within a helmet.

Using your headwear

Thurgood: We have a horseshoe-shaped device with a screen out in front. Typically, it’s worn within a hat. Let’s imagine, you have a standard cap on your head. It attaches to the cap with two clips on the sides. You then have a screen that protrudes from the front of the device that is held just below your eye-line. The camera is mounted on the side. It becomes a head-worn tablet computer.

It can be worn in hard hats, bump caps, normal baseball caps, or just with straps (and no hat). It performs regardless of the environment you are in -- be that in wind, rain, gales, such as working out on an offshore oil and gas rig. Or if you are an automotive technician, working in a noisy garage, it simply complements the protective equipment you need to use in the field.

Gardner: When you can bring this level of intelligence and instant access of experts to the edge, wherever it is, you’re talking about new economics. These type of industrial use cases can often involve processes where downtime means huge amounts of money lost. Quickly intercepting a problem and solving it fast can make a huge difference.

Do you have examples that provide a sense of the qualitative and quantitative benefits when this is put to good use?

Thurgood: There are a number of examples. Take automotive to start with. If you have a problem with your vehicle today, you typically take it to a dealership. That dealer will try to resolve the issue as quickly as it can. Let’s say the dealership can’t. There is a fault on the car that needs some expert assistance. Today, the dealership phones the head office and says, “Hey, I need an expert to come down and join us. When can you join us?” And there is typically a long delay.

So, what does that mean? That means my vehicle is off the road. It means I have to have a replacement vehicle. And that expert has to come out from head office to spend time traveling to be on-site to resolve the issue.

What can happen now using the RealWear device in conjunction with the HPE VRG MyRoom is that the technician contacts the expert engineer remotely and gets immediate feedback and assistance on resolving the fault. As you can imagine, the customer experience is vastly improved based on resolving the issue in minutes – and not hours, days, or even weeks.

Josephson: It’s a good example because everyone can relate to a car. Also, nowadays the car manufacturers are pushing a lot more technology into the cars. They are almost computers on wheels. When a car has a problem, chances are very slim you will have the skill-set needed in that local garage.

The whole automotive industry has a big challenge because they have all of these people in the field who need to learn a lot. Doing it the traditional way -- of getting them all into a classroom for six weeks -- just doesn’t cut it. So, it’s now all about incident-based, real-time learning.

Another benefit is that we can record everything in MyRoom. So if I have a session that solves a particular problem, I can take that recording and I have a value of one-to-many rather than one-to-one. I can begin building up my intellectual property, my FAQs, my better customer service. A whole range of values are being put in front here.

Gardner: You’re creating an archive, not just a spot solution. That archive can then be easily accessible at the right time and any place.

Josephson: Right.

Gardner: For those listeners wondering whether RealWear and VRG are applicable to their vertical industry, or their particular problem set, what are couple of key questions that they might ask themselves?

Shared know-how saves time and money

Thurgood: Do your technicians and engineers need to use their hands? Do they need to be hands-free? If so, you need a device like this. It’s voice-controlled, it’s mounted on your head.

Do they wear personal protectant equipment (PPE)? Do they have to wear gloves? If so, it’s really difficult to use a stylus or poke the screen of a tablet. With RealWear, we provide a totally hands-free, eyes-forward, very safe deployment of knowledge-transfer technology in the field.

If you need your hands free in the field, or if you’re working outdoors, up on towers and so on, it’s a good use of the device.

Josephson: Also, if your business includes field engineers that travel, do you have many traveling days where you had to go back because you forgot something, or it wasn’t the right skill-set on the first trip?

If instead you can always have someone available via the device to validate what we think is wrong and actually potentially fix it, I mean, it’s a huge savings. Fewer return or duplicate trips.

Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We have been exploring how RealWear and HPE MyRoom combine to provide workers in harsh conditions ease in accessing and interacting with the best intelligence.

Learn More About Software-Defined
And Hybrid Cloud Solutions
That Reduce Complexity

And we have learned how a hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computer is solving the last few feet issue for delivering a business’ best data and visual assets to some of its most critical on-site workers.

Please join me in thanking our guests, Jan Josephson, Sales Director for EMEA at RealWear, and JT, Director of Sales for UK, Ireland, and Benelux at RealWear, which is based in Vancouver, Washington.

Thurgood: Anytime, Dana. Thank you, very much.

Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining this BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews.

Thanks again for listening. Please pass this on to your IT community, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Transcript of a discussion on how workers in harsh conditions are gaining ease in accessing and interacting with the best intelligence thanks to cloud-enabled, hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computers. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2019. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, August 22, 2017

How IT and OT Collaborate to Usher in Factory of the Future Now

Transcript of a discussion on how Internet of Things innovation impacts modern factories and supply chains.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dana Gardner: Welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories. Stay with us now to learn how agile businesses are fending off disruption -- in favor of innovation.

Our next Internet of Things (IoT) technology trends interview explores how innovation is impacting modern factories and supply chains. We’ll now learn how a leading-edge manufacturer, Hirotec, in the automotive industry, takes advantage of IoT and IT combined to deliver dependable, managed, and continuous operations.

Here to help us to find the best factory of the future attributes is Justin Hester, Senior Researcher in the IoT Lab at Hirotec Corp. in Hiroshima, Japan. Welcome, Justin.

Hester

Justin Hester: Thanks for having me.

Gardner: What's happening in the market with business and technology trends that’s driving this need for more modern factories and more responsive supply chains?

Hester: Our customers are demanding shorter lead times. There is a drive for even higher quality, especially in automotive manufacturing. We’re also seeing a much higher level of customization requests coming from our customers. So how can we create products that better match the unique needs of each customer?

As we look at how we can continue to compete in an ever-competitive environment, we are starting to see how the solutions from IoT can help us.

Gardner: What is it about IoT and Industrial IoT (IIoT) that allows you to do things that you could not have done before?

Hester: Within the manufacturing space, a lot of data has been there for years; for decades. Manufacturing has been very good at collecting data. The challenges we've had, though, is bringing in that data in real-time, because the amount of data is so large. How can we act on that data quicker, not on a day-by-day basis or week-by-week basis, but actually on a minute-by-minute basis, or a second-by-second basis? And how do we take that data and contextualize it?

It's one thing in a manufacturing environment to say, “Okay, this machine is having a challenge.” But it’s another thing if I can say, “This machine is having a challenge, and in the context of the factory, here's how it's affecting downstream processes, and here's what we can do to mitigate those downstream challenges that we’re going to have.” That’s where IoT starts bringing us a lot of value.

The analytics, the real-time contextualization of that data that we’ve already had in the manufacturing area, is very helpful.

Gardner: So moving from what may have been a gather, batch, analyze, report process -- we’re now taking more discrete analysis opportunities and injecting that into a wider context of efficiency and productivity. So this is a fairly big change. This is not incremental; this is a step-change advancement, right?

A huge step-change

Hester: It’s a huge change for the market. It's a huge change for us at Hirotec. One of the things we like to talk about is what we jokingly call the Tuesday Morning Meeting. We talk about this idea that in the morning at a manufacturing facility, everyone gets together and talks about what happened yesterday, and what we can do today to make up for what happened yesterday.

Why don't we get the data to the right people with the right context and let them make a decision so they can affect what's going on, instead of waiting until tomorrow to react?

Instead, now we’re making that huge step-change to say, “Why don't we get the data to the right people with the right context and let them make a decision so they can affect what's going on, instead of waiting until tomorrow to react to what's going on?” It’s a huge step-change. We’re really looking at it as how can we take small steps right away to get to that larger goal.

In manufacturing areas, there's been a lot of delay, confusion, and hesitancy to move forward because everyone sees the value, but it's this huge change, this huge project. At Hirotec, we’re taking more of a scaled approach, and saying let's start small, let’s scale up, let’s learn along the way, let's bring value back to the organization -- and that's helped us move very quickly.

Gardner: We’d like to hear more about that success story but in the meantime, tell us about Hirotec for those who don't know of it. What role do you play in the automotive industry, and how are you succeeding in your markets?

Hester: Hirotec is a large, tier-1 automotive supplier. What that means is we supply parts and systems directly to the automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), like Mazda, General Motors, FCA, Ford, and we specialize in door manufacturing, as well as exhaust system manufacturing. So every year we make about 8 million doors, 1.8 million exhaust systems, and we provide those systems mainly to Mazda and General Motors, but also we provide that expertise through tooling.

For example, if an automotive OEM would like Hirotec’s expertise in producing these parts, but they would like to produce them in-house, Hirotec has a tooling arm where we can provide that tooling for automotive manufacturing. It's an interesting strategy that allows us to take advantage of data both in our facilities, but then also work with our customers on the tooling side to provide those lessons learned and bring them value there as well.

Gardner: How big of a distribution are we talking about? How many factories, how many countries; what’s the scale here?

Hester: We are based in Hiroshima, Japan, but we’re actually in nine countries around the world, currently with 27 facilities. We have reached into all the major continents with automotive manufacturing: we’re in North America, we’re in Europe, we’re all throughout Asia, in China and India. We have a large global presence. Anywhere you find automotive manufacturing, we’re there supporting it.

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Gardner: With that massive scale, very small improvements can turn into very big benefits. Tell us why the opportunity in a manufacturing environment to eke out efficiency and productivity has such big payoffs.

Hester: So especially in manufacturing, what we find when we get to those large scales like you're alluding to is that a 1 percent or 2 percent improvement has huge financial benefits. And so the other thing is in manufacturing, especially automotive manufacturing, we tend to standardize our processes, and within Hirotec, we’ve done a great job of standardizing that world-class leadership in door manufacturing.

And so what we find is when we get improvements not only in IoT but anywhere in manufacturing, if we can get 1 percent or 2 percent, not only is that a huge financial benefit but because we standardized globally, we can move that to our other facilities very quickly, doubling down on that benefit.

Gardner: Well, clearly Hirotec sees this as something to really invest in, they’ve created the IoT Lab. Tell me a little bit about that and how that fits into this?

The IoT Lab works

Hester: The IoT Lab is a very exciting new group, it's part of our Advanced Engineering Center (AEC). The AEC is a group out of our global headquarters and this group is tasked with the five- to 10-year horizon. So they're able to work across all of our global organizations with tooling, with engineering, with production, with sales, and even our global operations groups. Our IoT group goes and finds solutions that can bring value anywhere in the organization through bringing in new technologies, new ideas, and new solutions.

And so we formed the IoT Lab to find how can we bring IoT-based solutions into the manufacturing space, into the tooling space, and how actually can those solutions not only help our manufacturing and tooling teams but also help our IT teams, our finance teams, and our sales teams.

Gardner: Let's dig back down a little bit into why IT, IoT and Operational Technology (OT) are into this step-change opportunity, looking for some significant benefits but being careful in how to institute that. What is required when you move to a more an IT-focused, a standard-platform approach -- across all the different systems -- that allows you to eke these great benefits?

Tell us about how IoT as a concept is working its way into the very edge of the factory floor.

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Hester: One of the things we’re seeing is that IT is beginning to meld, like you alluded to, with OT -- and there really isn't a distinction between OT and IT anymore. What we're finding is that we’re starting to get to these solution levels by working with partners such as PTC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to bring our IT group and our OT group all together within Hirotec and bring value to the organization.

What we find is there is no longer a need in OT that becomes a request for IT to support it, and also that IT has a need and so they go to OT for support. What we are finding is we have organizational needs, and we’re coming to the table together to make these changes. And that actually within itself is bringing even more value to the organization.

Instead of coming last-minute to the IT group and saying, “Hey, we need your support for all these different solutions, and we’ve already got everything set, and you are just here to put it in,” what we are seeing, is that they bring the expertise in, help us out upfront, and we’re finding better solutions because we are getting experts both from OT and IT together.

We are seeing this convergence of these two teams working on solutions to bring value. And they're really moving everything to the edge. So where everyone talks about cloud-based computing -- or maybe it’s in their data center -- where we are finding value is in bringing all of these solutions right out to the production line.

We are doing data collection right there, but we are also starting to do data analytics right at the production line level, where it can bring the best value in the fastest way.

Gardner: So it’s an auspicious time because just as you are seeking to do this, the providers of technology are creating micro data centers, and they are creating Edgeline converged systems, and they are looking at energy conservation so that they can do this in an affordable way -- and with storage models that can support this at a competitive price.

What is it about the way that IT is evolving and providing platforms and systems that has gotten you and The IoT Lab so excited?

Excitement at the edge

Hester: With IoT and IT platforms, originally to do the analytics, we had to go up to the cloud -- that was the only place where the compute power existed. Solution providers now are bringing that level of intelligence down to the edge. We’re hearing some exciting things from HPE on memory-driven computing, and that's huge for us because as we start doing these very complex analytics at the edge, we need that power, that horsepower, to run different applications at the same time at the production line. And something like memory-driven solutions helps us accomplish that.

It's one thing to have higher-performance computing, but another to gain edge computing that's proper for the factory environment.

It's one thing to have higher-performance computing, but another thing to gain edge computing that's proper for the factory environment. In a manufacturing environment it's not conducive to a standard servers, a standard rack where it needs dust protection and heat protection -- that doesn't exist in a manufacturing environment.

The other thing we're beginning to see with edge computing, that HPE provides with Edgeline products, is that we have computers that have high power, high ability to perform the analytics and data collection capabilities -- but they're also proper for the environment.

I don't need to build out a special protection unit with special temperature control, humidity control – all of which drives up energy costs, which drives up total costs. Instead, we’re able to run edge computing in the environment as it should be on its own, protected from what comes in a manufacturing environment -- and that's huge for us.

Gardner: They are engineering these systems now with such ruggedized micro facilities in mind. It's quite impressive that the very best of what a data center can do, can now be brought to the very worst types of environments. I'm sure we'll see more of that, and I am sure we'll see it get even smaller and more powerful.

Do you have any examples of where you have already been able to take IoT in the confluence of OT and IT to a point where you can demonstrate entirely new types of benefits? I know this is still early in the game, but it helps to demonstrate what you can do in terms of efficiency, productivity, and analytics. What are you getting when you do this well?

IoT insights save time and money

Hester: Taking the stepped strategy that we have, we actually started at Hirotec very small with only eight machines in North America and we were just looking to see if the machines are on, are they running, and even from there, we saw a value because all of a sudden we were getting that real-time contextualized insight into the whole facility. We then quickly moved over to one of our production facilities in Japan, where we have a brand-new robotic inspection system, and this system uses vision sensors, laser sensors, force sensors -- and it's actually inspecting exhaust systems before they leave the facility.

We very quickly implemented an IoT solution in that area, and all we did was we said, “Hey, we just want to get insight into the data, so we want to be able to see all these data points. Over 400 data points are created every inspection. We want to be able to see this data, compared in historical ways -- so let’s bring context to that data, and we want to provide it in real-time.”

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IoT Advantage
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What we found from just those two projects very quickly is that we're bringing value to the organization because now our teams can go in and say, “Okay, the system is doing its job, it's inspecting things before they leave our facility to make sure our customers always get a high-quality product.” But now, we’re able to dive in and find different trends that we weren't able to see before because all we were doing is saying, “Okay, this system leaves the facility or this system doesn't.”

And so already just from that application, we’ve been able to find ways that our engineers can even increase the throughput and the reliability of the system because now they have these historical trends. They were able to do a root-cause analysis on some improvements that would have taken months of investigation; it was completed in less than a week for us.

And so that's a huge value -- not only in that my project costs go down but now I am able to impact the organization quicker, and that's the big thing that Hirotec is seeing. It’s one thing to talk about the financial cost of a project, or I can say, “Okay, here is the financial impact,” but what we are seeing is that we’re moving quicker.

And so, we're having long-term financial benefits because we’re able to react to things much faster. In this case, we’re able to reduce months of investigation down to a week. That means that when I implement my solution quicker, I'm now bringing that impact to the organization even faster, which has long-term benefits. We are already seeing those benefits today.

Gardner: You’ll obviously be able to improve quality, you’ll be able to reduce the time to improving that quality, gain predictive analytics in your operations, but also it sounds like you are going to gain metadata insights that you can take back into design for the next iteration of not only the design for the parts but the design for the tooling as well and even the operations around that. So that intelligence at the edge can be something that is a full lifecycle process, it goes right back to the very initiation of both the design and the tooling.

Data-driven design, decisions

As you loop this data back to our engineering teams -- what kind of benefits can we see, how can we improve our processes, how can we drive out into the organization?

Hester: Absolutely, and so, these solutions, they can't live in a silo. We're really starting to look at these ideas of what some people call the Digital Thread, the Digital Twin. We’re starting to understand what does that mean as you loop this data back to our engineering teams -- what kind of benefits can we see, how can we improve our processes, how can we drive out into the organization?

And one of the biggest things with IoT-based solutions is that they can't stay inside this box, where we talked about OT to IT, we are talking about manufacturing, engineering, these IoT solutions at their best, all they really do is bring these groups together and bring a whole organization together with more contextualized data to make better decisions faster.

And so, exactly to your point, as we are looping back, we’re able to start understanding the benefit we’re going to be seeing from bringing these teams together.

Gardner: One last point before we close out. It seems to me as well that at a macro level, this type of data insight and efficiency can be brought into the entire supply chain. As you're providing certain elements of an automobile, other suppliers are providing what they specialize in, too, and having that quality control and integration and reduced time-to-value or mean-time-to-resolution of the production issues, and so forth, can be applied at a macro level.

So how does the automotive supplier itself look at this when it can take into consideration all of its suppliers like Hirotec are doing?

Start small

Hester: It's a very early phase, so a lot of the suppliers are starting to understand what this means for them. There is definitely a macro benefit that the industry is going to see in five to 10 years. Suppliers now need to start small. One of my favorite pictures is a picture of the ocean and a guy holding a lighter. It [boiling the ocean] is not going to happen. So we see these huge macro benefits of where we’re going, but we have to start out somewhere.

A lot of suppliers, what we’re recommending to them, is to do the same thing we did, just start small with a couple of machines, start getting that data visualized, start pulling that data into the organization. Once you do that, you start benefiting from the data, and then start finding new use-cases.

We are going to start to see the macro benefits in about five to 10 years.

As these suppliers all start doing their own small projects and working together, I think that's when we are going to start to see the macro benefits but in about five to 10 years out in the industry.

Gardner: Well, I can certainly see why the projections for the growth in IoT deployments are so large, and maybe even underestimated. So really thanks for that.

I am afraid we will have to leave it there. We have been exploring how innovation is impacting modern factories and supply chains. And we’ve learned how leading-edge manufacturers like Hirotec in the automotive industry are making the most of IoT and IT combined to deliver dependable, managed, and continuous operations.

So please join me in thanking our guest, Justin Hester, Senior Researcher in the IoT Lab at Hirotec Corp. in Hiroshima, Japan. Thank you, sir.

Discover How the

IoT Advantage
Works in Multiple Industries

Hester: Thank you for having me.

Gardner: And thanks to our audience as well for joining this BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story discussion.

I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews.

Thanks again for listening. Please pass this along to your IT community, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.