The Internet of Things

People are linked to each other on the worldwide Web through old world email and websites, new world social networking and mobile connectivity, in groups, as individuals… as consumers and political activists. But what about machines – that industrial might that has defined great industrial societies? What if powerful machines could talk to each other in their own language, without having to be wired and linked on a case-by-case basis? So when a new machine is brought to the assembly line, instantly the other processing equipment knows how to relate to the “new kid,” what its place will be in the manufacturing process and how to integrate the additional or replacement capacity into the industrial chain. Without prior programming, a malfunction or a potential malfunction identifies itself to the mechanized workforce, and repairs or rerouting occurs seamlessly.

Okay, it’s beginning to sound a bit like the Terminator series of films, robots on steroids programming themselves to take over the world. But the industrial workforce, even with state-of-the-art robotics, is a creature of customized and highly sophisticated programming with fairly elaborate command and control software. What if machines had their own version of search and social networking and could find linkage without excessive specialized programming? They could collect data and share information where relevant with their fellow machines. Sounds a bit like “learning” and “self-programming.” Scary or the competitive advantage the United States needs to recapture the manufacturing that cheap foreign labor claimed as their own?

General Electric is making a huge bet that this is going to be the next level of interconnectivity. It just added “more than 250 engineers recruited in the last year and a half to G.E.’s new software center [in San Ramon, California] in the East Bay of San Francisco. The company plans to increase that work force of computer scientists and software developers to 400, and to invest $1 billion in the center by 2015. The buildup is part of G.E’s big bet on what it calls the ‘industrial Internet,’ bringing digital intelligence to the physical world of industry as never before…

“G.E. resides in a different world from the consumer Internet. But the major technologies that animate Google and Facebook are also vital ingredients in the industrial Internet — tools from artificial intelligence, like machine-learning software, and vast streams of new data. In industry, the data flood comes mainly from smaller, more powerful and cheaper sensors on the equipment… Smarter machines, for example, can alert their human handlers when they will need maintenance, before a breakdown. It is the equivalent of preventive and personalized care for equipment, with less downtime and more output.” New York Times, November 24^th.

As a manufacturing giant – from electrical power generators to aircraft engines – G.E. has already been building sensors into just about every facet of its complex machines. The data generated by these sensors has helped G.E. improve their products, but they have also generated a self-enhancing capacity that makes the machines run more efficiently.

But it’s not just machines but overall processes. With electronically coded (and communicating) wristbands on patients and sensors in just about everything a patient might use – from the bed to the IV unit administering drugs in a hospital – old world hospitals can manage costs while upgrading their levels of patient care. “For the last few years, G.E. and Mount Sinai Medical Center have been working on a project to optimize the operations of the 1,100-bed hospital in New York. Hospitals, in a sense, are factories of health care. The challenge for hospitals, especially as cost pressures tighten, is to treat more patients more efficiently, while improving the quality of care. Technology, said Wayne Keathley, president of Mount Sinai, can play a vital role.

“An important advantage, Mr. Keathley said, is to be able to see the daily flow of patients, physical assets and treatment as it unfolds…  But he said the real benefit was how the data could be used to automate and streamline operations and then make better decisions. For example, in a typical hospital, getting a patient who shows up in an emergency room into an assigned bed in a hospital ward can take several hours and phone calls.” NY Times.

It’s a tad unsettling when such processes self-enable, as machines seem to preempt decision-making that was once a matter of some individual’s conscious choice, but as cost pressures mount and this country seeks a path to sustain its economic advantage, this form of automated communication may be just the ticket. Unless the machines think that they don’t really need us anymore. Or maybe they’ll just be nice guys like Commander Data?

I’m Peter Dekom, and this massive change at an industrial level is inevitable and unstoppable… so just get used to it!