Tag: Internet of Things

The demand for field service management solutions has been on the rise for a very long time now and it has reached an all time high. According to a recent research by Gartner, the revenue from field service and workforce management systems comes to around $1.3 billion annually. The kinds of technology used for field management has been transforming the way field agents worked in their sites. Field service management solutions have gone a long way in increasing workforce productivity as well as improving collaboration among the field service employees. Now let’s see what other kinds of technologies are set to revolutionize the industry.

Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things is something that has had a huge impact in terms of productivity, as with this, you can practically access or even process and transmit information from pretty much any object. Machine to Machine communication (M2M) has been in use in the field service industry for quite some time now. With IoT, this system of sending and receiving signals from one device to another can expand and go beyond its boundaries to include a whole network of devices. According to a leading M2M solutions provider, “M2M is essentially about connecting and communicating with a thing, where a ‘thing’ may be a machine, a device or a sensor – basically anything that can send data whereas IoT goes beyond connecting computers with things. It represents things connecting with systems including business applications, ERP, and CRM systems, analytics systems, data warehouses and also people (workers, employees, customers)”. It basically means they have a much larger scope. Their potential is so vast, that it can range from enabling emergency service alerts in the case of search and rescue operations or even helping energy companies detect problems early on using alerts and predictive analysis. For example, a crack in a water pipe or a waste pipe can be identified using sensors and can reported to the control center with the help of alerts. Through this, the technician can repair the damage before it causes any severe problems. Similarly, IoT with cloud-based services and remote machines can send location information, status details as well as other such condition based service information., that can influence the world of field services greatly.

Augmented reality and wearables

Augmented reality is one technology that will definitely have a huge impact on the way field service agents work. When leveraged with wearable technology, workers get to actually experience real world situations and issues with the help of computer-generated sensory inputs such as sounds, videos, graphics etc. For example, a field worker can analyze the equipment or areas he is working on by augmented reality enabled glasses and identify the exact cause of the issue and remedy for it too. Hence, it becomes much easier for him to make the repairs in reality. Thus, augmented reality and wearables are actually 2 faces of a single coin, as one is supplemented by the other. They streamline field service management, introduce new and improved ways of working and interacting with people through Smart Watches, mobile phones, Smart Glasses etc.

3D Printing

This is also a technology that has been in the industry for several years now. It greatly helps field service managers and agents generate parts or equipments that they might need in their work in 3D. For example, if a repair requires a particular equipment or tool or part that is not available with you at the moment or is low on stock, you might need to put off your service visit for days or weeks. With 3D printing, you are relieved of such an issue. It provides an efficient system for parts management. It helps you create anything on the spot, with the help of a 3D printer, provided you have the required diagrammatics for it. According to Gartner, over the next three years, 3D printing is likely to reach a turning point, as the demand for low-cost printing devices is increasing rapidly and its use in industries is also significantly high.

Field service organizations are already using most of these technologies in their daily operations. As a part of our ever dynamic business environment, it is also important to look out for newer technologies and be open to technological changes. Since all of these technologies contribute to the productivity and efficiency of organizations, you need to make use of them in the best possible way. Technological disruption is bound to happen, so might as well make the most of it.

Will 3D printing change the way the world think, see and understand things? Of course it will, and if you aren’t excited about the whole thing, mark that you are not thinking big enough!

Futurists say that 3D printing impact will be so huge that it will make the life as we know it today, barely recognizable in 50-75 years’ time. It’s already getting there you see; England has created edible 3D printed hamburger, America is working on high-end 3D printed real-world cars, China, and Holland are building entire houses with 3D printing, ask what not is possible. Don’t you think our grandchildren will live in a fantasy world from where they would look back and laugh at how things are done today?

That is how 3D printing will revolutionize the technological future of almost every industry. Let’s see, how 3d printing will closely relate with another Big Thing–The Internet of Things (IoT) to drive this change.

Internet of Things aims at linking human behaviors to our day to day devices. Physical objects, people or animals will be provided unique identifiers and connected to a network embedded with electronics, sensors, software and internet connectivity, so that data can be exchanged between these without the need for a direct human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction, automating nearly every field of endeavor. The concept includes connecting human heart monitor implants, built-in automobile sensors packages, field operation tools for cops and firemen, biochips in farms and so on. In 5 years from now, the IoT will have 26 billion devices connected to it.
It is said that in 10 years, today’s silicon circuits will be replaced by plastic circuits. And 3D printing technologies will dominate such plastic printed electronics and circuits in IoT. Plastic printed transistors will become building blocks of wearable electronics and other IoT networks.

And the whole thing will be much cheaper than silicon devices, semiconductors, and circuits. Today semiconductors are manufactured by conventional electron beam lithography equipment costing from 1.5 million dollars to 30 million dollars for each; and a system that can print 3D electronics on a nano scale might go up to 500,000 dollars- that’s how 3D printing technology can massively drive the Internet of Things.

Belgian nanotechnology research center scientists made a transistor logic board with an astounding count of 3400 circuits, using inkjet printing technology that ran at a speed of 6Hz and is only 2*2 cm big. The researches see such plastic circuits as an “Exponential technology”. The founder of the Trillion Sensor movement and cofounder of nearly 9 MEMS technology companies, Dr. Janusz Bryzek believes that once 3D printing gets adopted on a wide scale, the traditional semiconductor manufacturing companies will face a violent mayhem. “Plastic circuits could end up having perhaps 1/1,000th the cost-per-area of the equivalent silicon device,” – says Bryzek. It is said that IBM Zurich lab researchers created nanometer sized 3D patterns on organic material using atomic force microscope just as a mask to create circuits.

3D printing in production and manufacturing: What to expect?
Gartner Research director, Pete Basiliere said, “3D printing is a technology accelerating to mainstream adoption”. 3D printing has already made its marks on how products are being manufactured. The Cisco Consumer Business Group (CBG), Denmark, used 3D printing instead of their conventional hand crafted prototyping technique to notice that the company actually achieved above 30 times reduction in prototype cost, reduction in prototype creation time from one week to just 90 minutes and an overall 33% design time reduction. We are able to bring production closer to the end user reducing the current supply chain restrictions. It will result in more customer engagement through the production of an object, which can greatly reduce stock pilings and inventories- similar to how Amazon operates. Shipping products and spare parts from one place to another may also become obsolete when you can actually 3D print parts on the site. This will in turn reduce the imbalance between export and import countries.

3D printing is already disrupting the current processes of design, prototyping, and manufacturing in almost every industry. As 3D printing gets adopted on a wider scale, many of the already invented products might have to be re-invented and we may have many more new products and things to learn about. For example, 3D printing has made many new and exciting geometries and shapes that were previously just imaginary. Our children might have formulas to learn that calculate area and volume of a shape we haven’t seen or studied about.

In Future, it’s fairly safe to imagine that you can manufacture anything with a 3D printer that you can’t with a printer (clothes, machines, robots, etc.) and use it as matter replicators like in Star Trek. Note that we already have near to accurate tools that are able to scan an object and create an exact copy of it using a 3D printer. So, eventually one day you can walk up to your printer and say, “make my copy”, as you have already seen in The Prestige!