Overview
—Open Innovation Achieved through Symbiotic Autonomous Decentralization—
THE manufacturing industry in particular has been home to considerable activity in recent years targeting new innovations based on the IoT. This has included standardization initiatives and the creation of ecosystems that tie together the manufacturing and IT industries, with the launch in the USA of the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) led by General Electric Company (GE), and the launch in Germany of the government-led Industrie 4.0 initiative.
The aims of the IoT can be broadly divided into improving the efficiency of the producers of things*1, and improving convenience for the users of these things. Smarter production can be achieved by producers using the IoT in plants and equipment to deliver benefits such as higher productivity and lower inventory. Industrie 4.0 is primarily focused on this aspect, seeking to achieve three forms of integration, namely vertical integration to link management and production facilities, horizontal integration to link factories together, and end-to-end digital integration to tie together design, manufacturing, and maintenance.
Business Development Division, Information System Platform Division, Services & Platforms Business Unit, Hitachi, Ltd. He is currently engaged in formulating business strategy based on the symbiotic autonomous decentralization concept.