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The 2018 ARC Forum is over, and I am collecting my thoughts about the array of topics covered in this coming together of suppliers, users, thought leaders, technologists, and just those folks looking to find out just what is actually transforming across industry, technology, and business in this purported era of digital transformation.
We’ve been focusing on this theme of digital transformation now for the last couple of years. We’ve been advancing concepts that define the industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 like the digital thread, the digital twin, advanced analytics, physical-cyber systems, production and supply chain ecosystems, AI and machine learning, openness, security, and new business models being spawned by all of the above.
Digital Transformation at the ARC Forum
As I moved around the various sessions from cyber security to IT/OT convergence, IoT platforms, virtual Smart Cities technologies, IoT smart intelligent edge, augmented reality, BIM for Smart Cities, smart machines, even blockchain for supply chains, it occurred to me that as diverse and varied that these technologies, trends, and transformations were, everything was actually coming together.
What I mean by coming together is that the digital thread that connects all these industries, technologies, and business models together is really beginning to form and coalesce, it appears that for the first time industries are at the brink of an actual transformation based on digitalization and new business models enabled by this transformation.
For all industries across discrete manufacturing, process, factories, plants, infrastructure, IT and services, the ultimate goal and path to the promised land was to have all elements of the life cycle from product and process design to manufacturing, operations and maintenance, to the supply chain, connected and sharing all data and actionable information. IT was supposed to be the answer, but often was a burdensome and expensive obstacle to the realization of this grand digital landscape. IT providers offered IT solutions for the sake of IT technology, and the users often lost sight of the ultimate goal as internal organizations across their enterprise built information silos between engineering, manufacturing, supply chains, and operations. Automation providers offered vertical architectures to connect production systems to enterprise business systems, but often these solutions were based on proprietary protocols and closed systems.
Basic Principles
The digital transformation that I am seeing is based on some basic principles: open systems, security, protocol and platform independence, industry and de facto standards, connected and intelligent data environment across manufacturing and process ecosystems, and the edge. Moreover, we have the confluence of technologies emerging at just the right time: advanced analytics based on AI and ML, next generation embedded systems that can make every sensor and device orders of magnitude more intelligent, virtual modeling and simulation of all aspects of the physical environments: factories, plants, supply chains, logistics, cities, infrastructure, operations, and transportation.
Not only are the virtual and physical worlds coming together, but everything in the life cycle across product, process, people, and operations is coming together. It is becoming evident that industry is at a juncture where it moves beyond limited architectures based on proprietary systems, and move into an era of actual openness that will usher in connected intelligent ecosystems for industries, business, government, and society at large.