The rollout of ‘green’ automotive technology will not happen overnight. The promotion of electric vehicles (EVs) depends on the industry embracing the art of the prediction through quality data and machine learning.
This article is also available in Italian / Questo articolo è disponibile in Italiano.
The historical model of the enterprise, with in-house staff based around a corporate headquarters and a handful of branch offices, is a good fit for traditional enterprise technologies: including a wide-area network that lets offices collaborate as one and share central resources.
Private networks based on 5G technology have revolutionised operations at large campuses such as ports, manufacturing plants and airports. With faster speeds and throughput rates, lower latency and extended coverage, 5G private networks have replaced WiFi in many of these environments and ushered in a new era of connected and automated machines.
This article is also available in Italian / Questo articolo è disponibile in Italiano.
In my most recent blog I discussed how mobility data can give supermarkets and other retailers insights that can guide their decisions and marketing post-lockdown. But data-driven decisions are essential for organisations of all kinds, especially in the transportation sector, especially at this time.
connected cars connected vehicles data analytics digital transformation Mobility Data
The 2020 Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival was, in many ways, the most interesting yet, as CKH IOD sponsored a design sprint that attempted to tackle a big question in just a few days, in a multi-stakeholder workshop that was completely virtual. This year we were tackling a key question: how can IoT be used to improve safety and efficiency for a water company’s field technicians, by providing more information about equipment, tools and assets in the field?
Unlike in previous years, this year’s festival sprint was totally online, led by CKH IOD, a team from Northumbrian Water and various experts from our partners at Invisible Systems, Fleet Space, LTI, United Vanning and Retroflo.
This article is also available in Italian / Questo articolo è disponibile in Italiano.
2020 - a year of the impossible: previously it was unthinkable that most employees would work exclusively from home. This begs the question: what other digital transformations may be possible in your enterprise?
The digital signage market is poised for substantial growth in the next five years with the retail sector leading the charge in adopting this technology. We chat with digital signage, marketing technology and retail experts Harry Horn of Scala and parent companySTRATACACHE, and Marco Salvetti of CKH IOD to find out how digital signage is changing the face of retail and what impact the technology will have.
Utilities, as we’ve mentioned previously in our posts about digital transformation, face the unique challenge of having a highly dispersed and often aging infrastructure that comprises a diversity of moving and stationary parts. But there are clear opportunities to get better visibility and control using IoT, especially for these moving parts, including heavy field equipment and vehicles.
This is an issue that we’re excited to be addressing at Northumbrian Water's Innovation Festival on 14-17 September, sponsoring a design sprint that tackles this question: how could IoT give field technicians better, faster information about the availability, usage and location of mobile assets like diggers, lorries and other equipment?
Furthermore, field technicians work in a highly dynamic environment that can include hazards. Can IoT be used to deliver timely warnings about known unsafe operating conditions, especially when technicians are conducting repairs on urgent outages that must be fixed quickly?
Driving out paper and driving up efficiency
The scale of the challenge with a utility like Northumbrian Water is significant. It serves 1.3 million properties in Northeast England and provides over 1 billion litres of water a day, across a vast infrastructure that includes almost 400 pumping stations.
Already the technology deployed to manage its operation is immense, including SCADA systems that deliver reliable information about the operational side of the water network.
But while these accurately alert on incidents and outages, we believe SCADA data could usefully be enriched and enhanced if the physical infrastructure -– right down to a physical asset –- were more visible, using IoT sensors that could detect vibration, movement, pressure, temperature or other changes of condition. The same sensors could potentially be deployed on all mobile assets and equipment, which is the subject of this year’s Innovation Festival sprint. By connecting these physical assets with IoT, the utility could then develop new digital work methods that eliminate paperwork, logbooks and other manual processes around use and location of equipment.
Cranes, diggers, lorries, trucks, and other tooling needed to maintain the water pipeline includes heavy equipment whose location could be pinpointed using IoT, and the performance and utilisation of assets could also be monitored.
That means better, richer data that not only helps optimise efficiency, but also helps the organisation understand and justify its investment in field equipment. The potential for improved worker safety is also clear, as connected equipment and connected workers would make it possible to send and receive safety alerts -- including distress calls and real-time alerts on hazards.
Design thinking and focussed innovation
We’re delighted that despite the challenges of 2020 this year's Innovation Festival is going forward as a fully virtual event, allowing us to bring together solution partners in a condensed, four-day version of the typical festival timeline.
CKH IOD will be assembling a team of partners to collaborate on what will now be a four-day sprint, with a presentation to management on Day 4. As in previous years, we’ll be taking a design thinking approach, examining the entire challenge of mobile asset tracking, and looking at what kinds of information would be most beneficial to business and to technical stakeholders.
This is focused innovation, assembling our skilled partners around how to create a solution that advances both the business and the technology objectives of the customer. Rather than a process lasting months, a working model is ready within days for presentation to management, who can then take on board what's been achieved and assess whether to move forward with a fuller project.
Facilitating rapid time-to-value for utilities and IoT
Last year CKH IOD, actually took First Prize for a hack-a-thon showing how a data integration solution can minimise water supply interruptions. This year, although the festival will be virtual, we look forward to again doing what we do best: facilitating collaboration with the right partners, and helping explore new ways to get better, faster, richer information that drives down cost and improves efficiency.
Business problems, particularly for utilities, are always holistic rather than isolated. The Innovation Festival provides an excellent opportunity to look at problems in the round, mindful of the wider context and investment of the organisation.
For more information and to see the full line-up of the 2020 Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival, visit https://www.innovationfestival.org/the-festival/line-up-for-2020/sprints/ckh-iod/
The Covid crisis of 2020 has obviously changed daily life, but it's also changing companies' ideas about technology, and how more automation and more connectivity can help them stay productive during lockdown and social distancing.
Never before have consumers turned to the online channel for shopping as much as they do today. With retailers suddenly needing to cater for much heavier volumes online, it raises new questions about how successful a retail organisation is at delivering omni-channel customer service which is centered on the customer's need.
