ARI Fleet Management manages 1.2 million things with wheels across North America and Europe, from telephone company trucks to corporate vehicles to railroad maintenance trucks.
It's a big and transformative phenomenon worldwide, so of course it has a buzzy lexicon all its own. You can call it whatever you want - Digital Operations Technology, Industry 4.0, Industry of the Future, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Smart Manufacturing - but you can't ignore it. MESA International offers a concise definition for this wave of change: "Smart manufacturing is the intelligent, real-time orchestration and optimization of business, physical, and digital processes within factories and across the entire value chain."
A report on customer's mobile experience with large companies has revealed that only 21 percent of supply chain companies ranked their company's mobile presence at 90 percent or above.
Big data has the potential to be both friend and foe. The Boston Consulting Group conservatively estimates that trusted uses of big data and advanced analytics could unlock more than $1tr in value annually. However, recent BCG consumer research has uncovered a previously hidden obstacle to successfully unleashing this enormous opportunity: data misuse.
As the world's biggest manufacturing power, China is well placed to lead the Internet of Things transition. Which is why this week GE, the world's biggest industrial company, opened what it calls a "digital foundry" in Shanghai. The centre will help Chinese companies develop and commercialise products for the industrial internet of things, which involves factory machines and industrial goods communicating with each other and their surroundings.
If you manage factories, airlines, hospitals or farms, you probably know something about the Internet of Things. If you don't, your thoughts on the IoT may start and end with wondering why a coffeepot needs to talk to a toaster. But the fact is that the continuing development of precision technologies could dramatically transform our planet's fundamental infrastructure.
The latest news, analysis, trends and solutions for big data, blockchain and the internet of things (IoT) and their impact on supply chain management. Big data describes the large volume of data that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis and can be analyzed for strategic business insights. IoT is the means that collects and sends data from a range of “things” — anything from watches to fridges to cars — that are connected to the internet with sensors or computer chips. Learn how companies around the world are using big data, blockchain and IoT for supply chain optimization and competitive advantage.
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