Internet of Things Page 5

Augmented Reality (AR) is a powerful tool used for design reviews, collaboration, and communicating design intent. The AR functionality built into every seat of Creo makes it easier for CAD users to share design info with colleagues, suppliers, customers, and manufacturing partners in a rich, immersive way.

First of all, why use Creo?

PTC Creo, formerly Pro/ENGINEER, is a product design software used by manufacturers for mechanical engineering, design and manufacturing. Creo supports designers from initial concept to design, simulation, and analysis. This CAD tool offers industry-leading capabilities, augmented reality (AR), and the ability to capitalize on the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) – which enables users to produce better products, more efficiently, and at a lower cost.

Here’s a few examples of how you can benefit from the ability to rapidly create, publish, and share AR experiences directly from Creo.

Creo AR is fundamentally changing the way product stakeholders outside of engineering consume and leverage product data.

Common industry challenges and how to fix them

Share augmented reality experiences

Challenge: You need to quickly, efficiently, and safely get feedback for a design review from a supplier or vendor.

Preparing and packaging models so that people can see them for distribution and review can be a challenge. Engineers typically go through a process of saving a copy the files and keeping track of drawings, assembly, and parts with a risk of compromising intellectual property in the process.

Solution: Creo AR allows you to rapidly define and publish AR experiences that can be distributed instantly only to those who have permission to view it.

Visualize augmented reality experiences

Challenge: You’re unable to convey the size and scale of your design.

It’s difficult to visualize a design if it’s behind a computer screen or you don’t have the means to meet up and physically see the prototype. Engineers can spend a lot of time and money on creating multiple design drafts and prototyping for a short review feedback that could end up relaying to them that more changes need to be made.

Solution: Creo AR allows for immersive design data with full context and scale so that you can interact, explore, and engage with design data.

Creo AR Design Share Extension

The Creo AR Design Share extension allows you to create and manage more augmented reality experiences. The extension allows you to fully control the authoring and accessibility of your company’s AR experiences which protects your intellectual property by preventing access to critical CAD data.

The first 5 AR experiences you create within Creo are free. After that you can purchase the ‘Enterprise package’ which allows you to create 50 models, or the ‘Individual package’ which allows you to create 10 models. Purchasing one of the packages for the Creo AR Design Share extension will also give you permanent shelf life (versus 6 months free) and the administrative control to add and remove authors and viewers as well as add and delete AR experiences.

The value of augmented reality across the Enterprise

Augmented reality goes beyond the ‘cool’ factor. Organizations can make money with the value that AR brings to design, manufacture, selling, service, training, and operations. Talk to our Smart Connected Enterprise experts to learn more about augmented reality.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming the way companies design, manufacture, and service their products and manufacturing floors. ‘Service’ is one of the most notable areas to be impacted by this wave of technology and connected devices. Monitoring assets in the field and on the shop floor gives service technicians access to usage, error, and predictive analytics prior to a repair. As companies continue to adopt the IoT, more organizations are satisfying the prerequisites to easily deploy augmented reality for service.

With the convergence of the digital and physical worlds, manufacturers are using augmented reality as a tool to help improve their service capabilities. Augmented Reality (AR) can deliver the right information at the very moment that it’s needed on the manufacturing floor so that field service technicians and other factory workers can reduce errors, enhance efficiencies, and improve productivity. AR also allows for content to be presented in arguably the most contextual way possible. When accurate information is presented over real-world devices there is little room for error and misunderstanding.

If field service technicians aren’t available to be on-site for a critical situation, then technicians can remotely assist customers with the help of AR. Customers will be able to observe service manuals with interactive 3D animations to disassemble components or work on equipment with which they’re unfamiliar with. If the users need further help, then the experienced field service technician can walk users through instructions while steaming the user’s device view in real time.

Augmented Reality Barriers to Entry

Your service and parts information have to be accurate and up-to-date in order to fully benefit from an augmented reality investment. Making sure your organization has a reliable Service Lifecycle Management system in place is the first step to digital transformation. Without accurate information on parts and equipment, field service technicians could replace the wrong part or be confronted with an outdated, undocumented design.

In order to be labeled a “smart connected enterprise,” a company should have a strategy to connect all of their assets and data; this includes technical publications. Connected technical illustrations have the power to show the current status for every part and piece of equipment. For example, if a mechanic could see a 3D representation of a vehicle’s carburetor and view critical metrics it would help them understand the potential for repairs or future failure.

Your organization needs to be IoT ready – meaning that there needs to be a strategy in place to input sensors on products and equipment. The Internet of Things allows products and assets to send alerts to a maintenance system that assigns a field service technician to perform a repair. Without the sensors that relay information about the status of those parts, and accurate 3D representations, augmented reality devices would be useless because there would be no relevant or up-to-date information to leverage in the field.

The IoT and Augmented Reality are transforming service and enhancing the field service process. Check out EAC’s solutions to see how you can start using AR today.

Here’s how connected products are changing service.

Connected products optimize business processes

Lets face it, business is all about efficiency – taking costs and time out of products and processes. This is exactly how connected products optimize business processes.

Connected products provide organizations with access to real-time data that is combined with existing system information to increase efficiency.

For example, you could provide data about your products condition in the field. By doing so, your technicians can be better prepared to troubleshoot. This can reduce the number of onsite visits because technicians have the right instructions or tools required to quickly repair an asset.

Implementing a connected product strategy can improve your first-time fix rate, decrease truck rolls and service calls, and increase the efficiency of your delivery model.

Connected products improve customer experience

Connected products also positively impact customer experience.

Customers recognize more service value when issues are resolved in one call or service visit. Connected products arm your service team with the information necessary to quickly and effectively address service requests and increase customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction correlates to service renewals.

Connected products differentiate offerings

With the use of a connected product platform, your organization will be able to increase the pace of product and service innovation, proactively diagnose and service your products all while increasing the speed of your service delivery.

For instance, if your hardware was a commodity or under heavy competitive pressure, improving the software, applications, and service that came along with your products could help differentiate your offering and help you outpace the competition.

Connected products drive new revenue streams

Connected products help drive new revenue streams by unlocking new business models, reducing customer downtime, meeting SLA’s, and by providing offerings such as “product as a service”. Would your company rather wait for occasional service revenue to come in, or would you rather intelligently monitor, maintain, and update your products for a consistent recurring fee?

Information will fuel the future of products and services. Data can be used to improve, differentiate, and optimize your business. The impact the Internet of Things has had on service delivery and customer experience is staggering. Delivering connected products is the first step to realizing the benefits of a connected product service strategy. We’d like to help you realize your strategy, implement industry-leading solutions, and support your implementation and deployment. Let’s connect.

Connect Your Products | Read the Connect Services Brochure

This is a guest post from our friends over on the PTC blog.

This week in Chicago, IoT business and IT leaders from multiple industries came together at Bosch Connected World to share best practices and case studies around connected products, services, and solutions.

During the conference, the emerging trend of using augmented reality in manufacturing was explored in a keynote on Wednesday by PTC CEO and IoT expert and visionary, Jim Heppelmann, where he shared a research-driven framework for how companies can capitalize on the convergence of the physical and digital worlds.

Heppelmann emphasized the experiences and opportunities augmented reality is creating for competitive advantage in the IoT.

With the number of smart, connected products increasing each day, the volume of data generated continues to grow, presenting both challenges and opportunities. More data is being created than humans can possibly consume, which creates the need for new processes and applications to address this challenge. The ability to make this information more digestible, while also being able to identify what is valuable and requires action, will become a key competitive advantage. Data analytics is one way to take this large amount of data and condense it to a smaller actionable amount, but AR presents another level of opportunity to redefine the way we as humans absorb and learn from this information.

The excitement over AR’s ability to change the way we consume and communicate information is getting a lot of attention. Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook weighed in on his view that AR will be bigger than VR in an interview with ABC, saying, “…my own view is that augmented reality is the larger of the two, probably by far, because this gives the capability for both of us to sit and be very present, talking to each other, but also have other things — visually — for both of us to see.”

Last week, an article in The Huffington Post also addressed how AR can offer tangible benefits by providing a more immersive form of education and training. As evident in Heppelmann’s keynote at Bosch Connected World, this can be very valuable in a business or manufacturing setting.

Using AR to ‘educate’ in a business setting opens up a vast amount of possibilities for addressing the many challenges that manufacturers across industries face in the age of IoT, including:

• Being able to better understand IoT data and make it actionable

• Marketing and selling smart, connected products

• Overcoming the manufacturing skills gap by optimizing training through simulation, which leads to better retention of information

• Changing the way service information is consumed and the way smart, connected products are serviced

The use of AR in enterprise will continue to grow. It is not only changing the way we interact with things, but also holds a lot of promise for increasing our understanding of information and improving the way we work.

There’s a lot of buzz around the Internet of Things (IoT) these days and the phrases getting manufactured and tossed around are confusing a lot of my friends.

I’m going to take a stab at clearing up some of the confusion and providing some context for the terms that may be showing up in your social feeds.

First, though, a couple of observations on how we got here.

Some of what is now known as the IoT isn’t new; it’s the Machine to Machine (MTM) and publish/subscribe connectivity protocols (MQTT) that have been around helping factory equipment talk on internal networks since the 1990s.

Other parts have been around for quite a while too; the concept of Application Programming Interfaces (API’s), Representational State Transfer (REST) calls and even the basics of Universal Resource Locators (URL) on the internet.

Add in what I call ‘Pervasive Connectivity,’ which is the idea that wired, wireless and mobile networks are almost everywhere and most people have devices to access these networks in their pockets.

It’s no wonder manufacturing and product development professionals are jumping to take advantage of what appears to be the 4th industrial revolution.

While a lot of the underpinnings are not new, the availability and acceleration of their alignment makes

for something new– and awesome!

Given that backdrop, at EAC we look at the IoT through 3 basic lenses; Smart Connected Products, Operations and Enterprises to see tangible benefits that roll up to trillions of dollars of associated annual impact.

All 3 approaches entail devices which contain a sensor network or data and connectivity of some form with the intent of pushing data to a platform for ingestion.

The platform (at least a good one) makes it easy to ingest from disparate systems and transform it into informational dashboards that help regular people, in regular roles take action and do their jobs more efficiently. It may even help companies create new jobs or whole new sources of revenue.

There’s also a layer of analytics that could happen at either the device (Thing) level or at the platform and cloud level– sometimes both. This is where we’re all headed, but it really boils down to the business case that makes sense of the strategy.

Tackling this new landscape requires not only ‘Things’ and ‘Platforms,’ but the right strategy.

Without understanding a business case, companies are likely to embark on ‘science projects’ that may, or may not result in effective change and growth.

So back to the point, here’s the short version of how I’d define these three approaches to the IoT:

1. Smart Connected Product (SCP)- one product in many places.

This is where a single product, with sensors and connectivity, would be produced by the 1000’s and end up in lots of places in the world.

As it functions, it pushes data to a platform.

The data is turned into information for the producers, service agents, owners, consumers, etc.

This way, the products functionality, performance, location or even the features being used can be tracked and reported to make the next version better, keep the current version going, or ensure timely refills or replacements, just to name a few uses.

2. Smart Connected Operation (SCO)– many assets, typically machines, in one place.

This is the factory setting where millions of dollars’ worth of equipment are already on the books of a

company and they’re trying to get as much from their investments as possible.

Connecting the control systems that are already inside of these machines to a platform grants operations access to the data that is already available, but previously unseen.

It is enlightening and even accelerating to provide direct access to the right information to the right role at the right time.

This can provide real-time and actionable information ranging from a holistic plant view down

to an explicit operation on a specific machine.

3. Smart Connected Enterprise (SCE) – real-time access and visibility to existing silos of data and information.

Think ‘Wrap and Extend’ rather than ‘Rip and Replace.’

This is truly the place we’re all imagining.

It’s the ability to keep in place many of the systems that have developed and grown up in our organizations and weave them together to quickly build role-specific dashboards and mashups that look into separate, and currently existing silos of data and information.

It also provides the ability to weave in new streams of data from newly connected products and even subscribe to existing data readily available in the public domain; weather, traffic, economic forces, etc.

Now integrate that with the ability to quickly and simply provide customers, partners, vendor and service providers with the information they’ve always wanted in relation to your product.. then you’ve really got something.

A smart connected enterprise weaves together the entire enterprise with ways to access the right information in the right place at the right time.

Think mobile mashups, autonomous integrated systems, Augmented Reality, and the list of awesomeness goes on.

This may have gone a little deeper than originally planned, I’ll blame my excitement behind the buzz.

There is truly a massive tangible benefit to getting started down this road.

Note that I said ‘started.’ This isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. The 3 lenses of the IoT should be implemented strategically over time.

And if you’re speculative or apprehensive, I get it. But I’d challenge you to stuff the skepticism and get started – your competitors already have.

Give us a call and we’ll get you going quicker than you could imagine.

If you’re already on the path and have hit a few speed bumps, we can help.

We’re in the business of transforming the way companies design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products and enterprise, and we don’t let the speed bumps slow us down.

It is not too bold to say the Internet of Things (IoT) is just about everywhere. Some even say that IoT will have a greater impact on business and productivity than the introduction of the Internet itself.

Whether you embrace it or attempt to look past it, the wave of IoT has already started disrupting many industries.

So what exactly is the Internet of Things? Well, if you haven’t read the HBR article by Michael Porter and Jim Heppelmann, I encourage you to do so.

I am referring to the concept that our physical and digital worlds, in which we have always compartmentalized into separate realities, have begun to converge into a single new reality.

This new reality with the IoT has started to change the way we do business.

Our strategies have begun to take our physical products, parts components and factories, and connect them to our digital systems.

This has allowed us to collect data, analytics, performance measures and much more.

Although there is so much that you can learn about IoT, Here are 10 things you need to know about the Internet of Things.

1. IoT Can Fuel Your Existing Business Initiatives

The Internet Things should not be thought about as something separate and distinct from your business strategy, but rather as an opportunity filled with unlimited capabilities.

This revelation could possibly be the exact catalyst needed to meet your existing business initiatives.

No matter what your business is specifically looking to achieve, IoT can be a real game-changer.

Some businesses have used smart connected operations to discover efficiencies while reducing risk.

Others have integrated smart connected products by modifying and creating new assets and services to increase revenue.

I have also seen companies incorporate smart connected solutions to quickly bring products and services to the market.

Despite your industry, an IoT strategy can be shaped to help fuel your existing initiatives.

2. Everyone Over Designs

Moving from IoT strategy to value is complex.

There are lots of distractions and rabbit holes to go down.

Achieving your IoT initiatives requires focus.

By this, I am referring to the importance of strategically mapping out the innovation that you are looking to drive.

Before deploying an IoT strategy, make sure to ask yourself if the concepts you are looking to implement match to the strategies you are pursuing.

3. There Is No Time Like The Present

Don’t over think it, just get started.

Your company has a chance to take part in one of the greatest economic value adding opportunities of a lifetime.

This is your chance to embrace change and see all it has to offer.

Companies that are able to identify the opportunities and quickly bring to market solutions with IoT will be the leaders of decades to come.

4. Think Wrap/Extend, Not Rip/Replace When it Comes to the Internet of Things

The idea behind integrating the IoT into your business strategy should evolve around bettering your processes, not replacing what you have done so far.

This is your time to pro-actively use the IoT to drive growth and optimize your current business operations.

5. The IoT Stack is a Huge Help

The IoT stack is a handy way to break down any IoT project into manageable chunks. Think about it this way.

Before adopting innovative technologies your company must establish frameworks, protocols, and standards that are consistent with your business strategy.

Your framework should revolve around the problems your business is looking to solve.

By breaking down your IoT solution into 5 layers you can better understand the business technology tradeoffs that are needed at each level and the system as a whole.

6. Zealots and Laggards Are Everywhere. Beware.

It’s easy to get distracted by the daily grind and to put off getting started.

Change is a scary thing for all of us, so it’s easy to procrastinate.

Doing nothing is one of the biggest threats when it comes to the Internet of Things.

The reality is, big change is what can define success.

Don’t let your company develop a reputation as a technical laggard in the IoT arena.

7. Avoid The Simple Small Tool Sets

If you’ve ever heard the saying “go big or go home”, it defiantly applies to an IoT strategy.

So often I see companies who are hesitant to make a big change, resorting to small easy to adapt ideas.

If your company wants to see real results, you must avoid wasting your time on the small and simple projects.

Running test pilots to assess potential value is not how you will reach your real strategic initiatives.

To see change, you must make a change. This is when you need to roll up your sleeves and make a connection to your real business issues.

8. The Control Engineers Are The Key to Success

On IoT projects, get to the Controls engineer — this is who has the keys to unlock the room or path to data that might already exist.

Who is your control engineer? This is the person that brings together disparate systems within your network.

A good control engineer knows how to design, develop, and implement the systems that will control your specified applications, networks and machines.

9. IoT is a Big Concept and Many Have Different Views

After introducing the concept of the Internet of Things to many different companies; it has become apparent there are many diverse views of IOT along with its purpose and benefit.

It’s important to remember that two people who seem to differ on the topic of IoT may simply be looking at opposite sides of the same spectrum.

IoT solutions offer limitless capabilities that can easily be tailored to your specific business needs.

This means what IoT can offer for your business, may be completely different than the purpose and benefit it can offer for another.

10. There Is Always a Way To Do Something with IOT

The Internet of Things can be applied to just about every business strategy that exists; it’s just a matter of working at it.

For example, IoT has been used for the complex systems of products like John Deer’s Farmsight to optimize the farm, to simple examples like the Babilat tennis racket that provides data about a player’s performance.

Device connectivity and data analytics enable a closed-loop, real-time digital thread that can connect your people, systems, and equipment across the entire supply chain.

With the rapid creation and developments of new IoT applications, any organization can connect, manage, and optimize complex sets of disparate systems.

See how IoT goes beyond connecting products and has expanded to enable manufacturing and service processes by reading these case studies from PTC.

When it comes to IoT, there is always a way to do something.

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