Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] Talk to me. Information, news and entertainment on demand. WUSradio.com. 0:11 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Sledley Show. 0:25 My last guest today has more than thirty years of experience in helping organizations, I think, chart an amazing product and marketing strategy. 0:35 He has helped hundreds of organizations across diverse industries to really connect those dots and clearly articulate the always evolving business value of technology. 0:46 Please welcome Joe Barkai, consultant, speaker, author, blogger, you name it. Joe, welcome to the show. Hi, Peggy. Good to be back. Yes, it is. 0:57 It's been way too long since you've been on the show, and it's good to hear your voice. And we've got lots to talk about. I guess what I wanna know from you, Joe, it's been a while, and what's hot? 1:07 What's going on in this IoT space as we start the new year off? You're the perfect guy to talk about it. What's gonna be new this year? 1:17 Well, what's hot and continues to be hot are emerging technologies on kind of IoT and on top of IoT, augmented reality and cert-certain technology of that area, as well as kind of the new set of buzzwords around artificial intelligence, around machine learning. 1:34 Um, so I think we'll he-- continue to hear much about those terms. 1:38 Although I gotta say that I think that the interest and the implementations is fueled or are, are fueled more perhaps by catchy headlines and enthusiastic vendors than by clear vision and, and articulation of value on the part of, of, of the, of the manufacturing companies. 1:55 Um, and I'm really not saying that these technologies do not have significant potential value. They certainly do. Uh, cer-certainly around IoT and augmented reality, and then as we move forward, AI and machine learning. 2:09 Um, so they certainly have significant potential value to improve operations, to, um, to improve research, even, uh, perhaps in some areas, kind of society at large. 2:20 But I think that many organizations are still very slow to adopt, and for n-number of reasons which we can discuss, I'm sure. 2:28 You know, we've talked about the Internet of things and, you know, and its exciting vision, you know, for a-all the devices. 2:35 You know, all these connected devices, and you love to talk about what PCT talks about a lot is the world. Um, we have this digital twin operating in the cloud and experiencing, you know, the life cycle of the product. 2:50 It is and what that transformation is going to be, I think, for manufacturing. Uh, do you think that we're still gonna see even more of this, quote, you know, digital twin in twenty-eighteen? Absolutely. 3:06 I think we'll see more of it, and, uh, we'll see some real meaningful implementations in the manufacturing space, as well as I believe we'll see digital mani-- the digital twin or kind of different manifestation thereof in other areas. 3:20 And, and the reason is that I believe, and I think I've written about this more than once or twice, is that many organizations, especially in manufacturing, especially product manufacturing companies and product owners, product, um, and brand owners, really suffer from pretty acute myopia. 3:36 Because once they release the product, they kind of lose sight of the product. They don't really know how well it performs, um, how users are interacting with it. Uh, you know, all these features that they in... 3:48 spend so much time and money and effort developing. Do users even use these features? They really don't know. They suffer from this myopia. 3:56 Uh, and when they do, [laughs] the funny thing is that when they do get information, it's usually bad news. As you know, you know, customer complaints, warranty claims, social media kind of rants about the product. 4:08 And I think the digital twin is really a way to cure at least some of this myopia. 4:13 What the digital twin does is create a rich multidisciplinary context, in real time when necessary, context about the product and the relationships between the products, the tasks they, they perform, how the users interact with the products. 4:29 All these things give decision-makers, at any level, much better up-to-date rich context for making the right decisions. I, I certainly think that we'll see more and more digital twin adoption in the next few years. 4:44 You know, I was just talking in our, in our last segment that we talk about in preventative maintenance. We've only seen, you know, there's less than eighty... 4:52 There's still room for eighty-eight percent of manufacturers to adopt preventative maintenance, really understand diagnostics, and really take advantage of things there. 5:01 Are we still seeing this, the manufacturers lagging behind what they need to be doing when it comes to the Internet of things and all of this technology we talked about? 5:12 'Cause now we're all starting to talk about blockchain as being the next big evolution in all of this, but we're still have a lot of things manufacturers need to be doing in just basic IoT that we say, you know, the beginnings of IoT. 5:27 I, I think you're right. And, and we see a very inconsistent landscape. On the one hand, we see manufacturing companies that have implemented IoT under different names, and they've been doing this for many years. 5:38 You know, shop floor connectivity, remote assets, uh, monitoring and so on. So they, they've done this, uh, and they continue to evolve. 5:46 And for those manufacturing companies, it's easier in a way to leverage new technologies, uh, leverage platforms such as you mentioned, PTC. 5:53 So pl-platforms like PTC ThingWorx or GE Predix or, or Siemens MindSphere, and there are many platforms. So this evolution helps them. 6:03 At the same time-Other companies are really, really behind, um, because they've not perhaps fully embraced the concept. Perhaps they're concerned. 6:11 There's still-- I still hear too many concerns about privacy and security, about cloud-based information. I still hear uncertainty about wh-where's the ROI, and if there is ROI, the fact that it's so long. 6:25 So we're gonna s-continue seeing, I think, very inconsistent landscape. And I absolutely agree with you, Peggy. 6:32 I think that companies are still n-not utilizing the opportunity in IoT and digital twin, specifically in maintenance. But in part, I don't think it's the fault of the technology. 6:42 It's the fault of, you know, whether it's [chuckles] the vendors or the adopters that they set their sights too high. They are really trying to implement models, uh, that are very, very complex. 6:53 And now that we are now kind of in the midst of throwing yet new buzzwords such as machine learning into it, I think that we'll see as many disappointments as we'll see successes in the next few years. 7:06 I think that there's still a very, um, still very high level of misunderstanding about taking those kind of technologies to the field. 7:16 It's one thing to build a prototype, and some of these prototypes and proofs of concept are extremely, uh, impressive, but scaling them, uh, is very hard. Scaling them in the sense that 7:27 dealing with the variability of elec- of mechanical equipment, dealing with the wear and tear of equipment over time. So how do the models adapt to those? But overall, I think the- Joe, you made a very important... 7:40 Well, I, I- Go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt, but you made a very important, and we've just got about a minute and a half. You made an important point about data security. 7:46 So I guess I want to ask you is, why do you think that data security, or data privacy I should even say, is, is, still needs to be a number one priority in twenty eighteen when we look at this for manufacturers? 8:03 I-It's a good question. It's been a good question for many years, uh, or several years, and I think it's just a matter of time. I don't... I cannot explain the why other than perhaps, um, 8:13 inflexibility and resistance to change. I think there's no doubt that cloud-based technology in terms of computation, storage, uh, and handle data security and privacy are the way to go. 8:24 Um, and I think that every time there's a small breach, people panic. 8:28 I think it's, it's, you know, I see it in, to some extent in my job, and then I'm sure you're seeing this the same as well as vendors, is helping manufacturing companies understand that despite some of those challenges, despite, you know, setbacks here and there, cloud-based technology is more secure, better to manage, uh, privacy, and it's the way to go. 8:48 It's the way forward. But since you mentioned it, I, I really want to add another point here, tying this point here, uh, to A-AI, to artificial intelligence and machine learning. 8:59 Recently, I started taking interest in questions regarding biases in, in data, especially when you think about public data and social media data. 9:08 Uh, we, we are very quick to say, well, machine learning will look at all this data and figure out the, the patterns and come up with better solutions. Yes, but this data is full of biases. 9:20 Some of it is intentional, other times it's not. But it's everything from, you know, social and, and gender biases as well as, you know, technical statistical biases. 9:29 And the irony is that the more powerful the algorithms are, the more difficult it is to detect those biases. Joe, we'll have to continue this ex-- conversation. Thanks for being with us. I appreciate it. Thanks, Peggy. 9:41 All right. Thank you. All right. This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and relevant technology. Remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. 9:51 We'll be right back right after this commercial break. [upbeat music] With great technology comes great responsibility. 10:05 Follow Internet of Things tech expert and futurist Peggy Smedley, repeatedly ranked as a top IoT and M2M influencer. 10:12 Go to peggy_smedley on Twitter for her take on the latest tech news and lively interviews with other industry insiders on her weekly radio show. Visit twitter.com and search for peggy_smedley to follow her today. 10:29 [upbeat music] Video consumption is on the rise, so to reach this audience, Constructek Magazine created Constructek TV. 10:39 Constructek TV helps construction professionals leverage emerging solutions to better their business. 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