Technology

IoT, IIoT, and Industry 4.0—Our Common Future or Summoning the Demons?

What’s your initial reaction when you hear the Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or Industrie/Industry 4.0? Are you excited because it represents an unparalleled opportunity to make things better? Or are you defensive because you fear that robots are taking over the world and will significantly degrade humanity? Well, I don’t have the answer to that ...

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Building Better Supply Chains with Blockchain

Blockchain, the technology that enabled the creation of bitcoins and shook up global financial systems, may one day be disrupting supply chain operations as well. Ginny Rommety, CEO and chairwoman of IBM, has predicted that blockchain has the potential to transform transactions in the way that the Internet transformed communications. That could include all transactions and movements along the supply ...

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Smart Cities and their Potential Impact on Supply Chains

Heard the term “Smart City” yet? In researching the 2017 MHI Annual Industry Report, to be released on April 5 at ProMat 2017, Deloitte Consulting’s Patrick Salemme was surprised to discover that 47 percent of the more than 1,100 survey respondents (all manufacturing and supply chain professionals) were aware of the concept. “Further, of that 47 percent, 24 percent reported ...

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Big Data and Automating Processes with Suppliers

In these days of rapidly advancing technology, Big Data can be seen one of two ways: as a vehicle for simplification or the speed bump that makes things more complex. The difference? In terms of the supply chain, the experts say it’s understanding big data’s new business case, using it to automate processes and discover end-to-end supply chain visibility and ...

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Autonomous Vehicles and Drones

Autonomous, or driverless, vehicles and drones have hit the main-stream of public consciousness. Hardly a week passes without with the national media breathlessly covering the technologies’ developments, including the good (Canadian officials using drones to map and determine the cause of a massive wildfire in May); the bad (a personal drone aircraft landing on the White House lawn last January ...

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Navigating the Politics of Analytics

In a prior issue of MHI Solutions and in the 2016 MHI Annual Industry Report—Accelerating Change: How Innovation is Driving Digital, Always-on Supply Chains, you may have noticed that one of the emerging technologies or innovations driving supply chain success is analytics. With talk of the future impact of analytics (namely predictive analytics) on the “digital, chain, always-on supply chain,” ...

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Intelligent Robots Offer a Competitive Edge

The use of automation and robotics in the supply chain is not new, but it is increas­ingly identified as both a disruptive force and a competitive advantage by supply chain leaders. In the 2016 MHI Annual Industry Report, 51 percent of survey respondents said the technology has the potential to disrupt the industry and offer an advantage to companies that ...

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3D Printing Will Disrupt Manufacturing as Adoption Rates Rise

3D printing is a “game changer” for manufacturing, but its real impact on supply chains will take years to play out, experts say. According to the 2016 MHI Annual Industry Report, Accelerating change: how innovation is driving digital, always on supply chains, only 17 percent of nearly 900 supply chain professionals surveyed said they believe that 3D printing can be ...

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Predictive Analytics

The concept of predictive analytics is one that sends many to thinking of the future. Not so for Randy McClary. He’s quickly reminded of the past. As a champion of the theory of dis­ruptive innovation—when a new idea is so much better than the traditional way of doing things that it completely displaces the old—what comes to mind for McClary ...

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Sensors and the Industrial Internet of Things

In 10 years’ time, there will be more than 100 billion people, devices and systems connected to the Internet of Things, and each connected device will be equipped with dozens of sensors, says Boris Felgendreher, director of marketing, EMEA, GT Nexus. “You have big data and cloud platforms and the Internet of Things all coming together at the same; it’s ...

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