Category: Digital Transformation

Context is King – virtual collaboration in product development

The past two months have given the topic of virtual collaboration an enormous boost. The Corona crisis has forced everyone to deal with this topic. And the conclusion is consistently positive!

In the first few weeks, the main task was to create the possibilities for virtual collaboration. Now it is a matter of continuing to use the potential of these possibilities after the return to “normality”. What’s even more: many companies are taking the experience they have gained as an opportunity to rethink their structural and process organization and to further digitalize business processes.

Special case product development

While common office solutions in combination with video conferencing are easy to use in areas such as administration, marketing or sales, they often reach their limits in product development. One reason for this is, among others, the high level of interdisciplinarity in this area. Many different specialist teams have to work together at the same time and on several projects. Added to this is the high complexity of the work objects, which are often developed as structures and have many different relationships with each other. In order to work together productively under these conditions, the possibilities of the usual IT tools are not sufficient.

New requirements for IT tools

Intelligent platform solutions for collaborative product lifecycle management (PLM), which enable context-related interdisciplinary work, provide a remedy here. Context-related means that all work objects are linked to each other and can be called up at any time in the work process and from any context. Analysts like Gartner speak of content collaboration tools. This means that you can navigate from one work item to all neighboring work items without having to search and ask questions. This guarantees efficient and valid collaboration, especially in distributed teams.

Intelligent platform solutions offer yet another advantage in collaboration: a common environment in which all project participants can inform themselves and view changes directly. Cross-team chat functions, so-called activity streams, support the consistent exchange of information on the current status of the project. Especially in virtual collaboration, this guarantees a continuous flow of information, which in most cases more than compensates for the lack of “office grapevine” or the meeting at the coffee machine. Gartner has a term ready for this, too, which is Workstream Collaboration.

Another key component of intelligent platform solutions is the use of integrated task boards, which allow development teams to organize their tasks independently. In the past, task lists with several hundred entries were often used. Today, task boards allow only important milestones or quality gates to be set, but leave the individual tasks within the milestones to the teams themselves. This allows an interdisciplinary, distributed team to carry out a joint weekly planning on screen in virtual sessions, e.g. via Zoom.

The main advantage of integrated task boards is the direct linking of to-do cards on the boards with the work objects. This avoids not only the time-consuming search for the appropriate work objects, but also error and version risks. These additional expenses and risks usually occur with purchased individual solutions.

Conclusion:

The Corona crisis has prepared the ground for the continuous expansion of virtual collaboration – also in product development – from now on. Product development places special demands on IT tools for efficient virtual collaboration. Especially working in context is a decisive productivity factor here. Selected intelligent platform solutions for collaborative PLM already meet these requirements today.

Getting started with IoT in 4 steps

Everyone talks about the Internet of Things (IoT) and the digital twin – they form the framework for new, digital business models. According to a forecast by PwC, digitization will bring the manufacturing industry an increase in turnover of more than 270 billion euros in Germany alone over the next four years.

Companies are hoping for sales growth through smart products and digital business models. This is also confirmed by our current IoT study, which was conducted jointly with the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK) and the Association of German Engineers (VDI). It shows that companies have high expectations, but at the same time makes it clear that there is still a certain reluctance to implement the new legislation in practice. Many companies are faced with the question: “How does it actually work with IoT?”

In my experience, companies often think the second way before taking the first step, which leads to restraint. Of course, it is good and important to have a vision. The picture, which is often published in blogs and forums, usually shows very sophisticated IoT scenarios. They don’t start where many companies currently stand with their business model and technology knowledge.

That’s why it’s important to gain your own experience and gradually approach new digital business models, true to the motto Think big, start small, act now!. Own projects, also together with technology partners, automatically expand the wealth of experience. So why not start using the new technology to support classic business?

With my contribution I would like to show how companies can realize an effective IoT scenario for their business in just 4 steps.

Step 1: The digital twin as a communication interface

The necessary data for the digital twin is usually already available in the company. The first step is a simple serial number. It serves as a documentation interface and connects the data with the product. 3D data is added later. The data is often already available in PLM or ERP systems – for example from production, purchasing or development – and should be displayed in a dashboard.

Step 2: Generate data via sensors

Sensors are also often already available, for example for controlling devices, machines and systems. They record states such as power, pressure, consumption, etc. This data is now consistently recorded and stored suitably. In this way, the current status can always be viewed. In addition, limit values are defined, for example for excessive current consumption, whereupon warnings can be sent and errors rectified.

Step 3: Initiate smart maintenance work

A detailed damage and wear picture can be derived from the analysis of the data and measures such as maintenance projects can be initiated as early as possible. The digital twin serves as a documentation interface. All adjustments to the product thus remain traceable. This data history can later be used for the development of predictions (predictive maintenance). The digital twin as maintained supports the documentation of product changes, can link them with historical data and thus also prove in which configuration the product functions optimally. The classic product lifecycle is thus extended to its usage.

Step 4: Request spare parts

In addition, the information is used to request spare parts. With the help of compressed service parts lists or spare parts catalogs, the data is assigned to the affected component and the required spare part is delivered in the event of imminent damage. This data is also already stored in ERP systems. This process can be triggered manually or automatically on the basis of the device messages. In this way, companies avoid downtime in their own production.

In these 4 simple steps, an efficient IoT scenario has been implemented and a big step towards a digital business model has been taken. I am sure that many companies will be able to get started with the new technology in this way.

So: Get started and use the experience gained for digital business models!

IoT failures and trust in technology

At the beginning of April this year I attended the building IoT in Cologne. At the conference, which was organized by heise developer, iX and d.punkt publishing house, everything revolved around applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 in lectures and an exhibition. Together with my colleague Yang Zhong, I presented modern user experience concepts (UX) for IoT solutions in a lecture.

At the end of our presentation, which showed a user’s work processes, from the data acquisition of a real “Thing” to the visualization of live data in the dashboard using a Digital Twin, there was a very stimulating discussion. Two points were particularly interesting here:

  • In many application areas, the topic of customer journeys is high on the agenda – which confirms the current trend.  
  • It is essential to develop software for users – which was also a consensus.

The evening was dedicated to Industrial IoT. As a moderator, I hosted a discussion with representatives from various enterprises and software companies, such as Miele, Dürr Dental, Codecentric or akquinet. An intensive discussion around the predominant topics of the industry 4.0 took place here. In addition to the choice of the control electronics or the wireless standard, this also includes questions as to whether an IoT solution should be operated in a cloud. The reasons for solutions in a cloud are of course the convenience and the relatively efficient and simple scalability with regard to the number of “things” to be managed. On the other hand, managing the software on your own servers (on-premise) means that confidential product or customer data really won’t leave your premises. The discussion has confirmed my assessment that both approaches have their advantages in practice and are applied accordingly.

One of my personal highlights at this year’s building IoT was a negative hit list of IoT products, so-called IoT failures: products that have massive security gaps, such as open data interfaces. Some “classic” vulnerabilities were already known, such as unaltered standard passwords that allow data misuse. Others gaps really surprised me: such as a smoke detector of a well-known brand, which is already equipped with a microphone (?!) as standard, which in turn allows unwanted monitoring in living rooms.

Why is there a microphone in a smoke detector?  We can’t say that for sure, at least it’s not in the customer’s interest and causes a massive loss of trust in technology. And that is precisely the point: acceptance of new technologies requires trust. And this is becoming more and more important with increasing digitalization.