Supply Chain Internet Thingies

Picture source: pinnacle-e.com

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER – VOLUME 46 NUMBER 5

Billions of connected devices will provide wealth of information.
The huge increase in the number of devices connected to each other should allow supply chains of the near future to provide services to customers more efficiently, according to a report from Gartner.

The analyst firm predicted that 26 billion devices will be connected to the Internet of Things by 2020, according to TechRadar. That could cause huge challenges for data centers that must handle such connections. But the operational, customer and performance information will give big opportunities to marketers and product designers in their supply chain roles.

Digital marketing could use customer data to segment audiences to a greater extent. Designers will need to figure out what technology to embed into products that will let them communicate with other devices.

Michael Burkett, Gartner’s managing vice president, told the news site that the changes are just beginning. He said that certain devices such as commercial telematics now used in trucking fleets to improve logistics efficiency. And some are just emerging, such as industrial fabrics to monitor manufacturing process.