Today’s digital disruption for a manufacturer will involve the industrialised IOT. Factories themselves are being fitted with sensors to control plant and optimise productivity. Digital disruption goes beyond the old world of ERP and supply chain management to and IOT enabled world where data from design through to production drives greater insight to processes and production. And the next phase is building IOT into manufactured goods. From car makers to white goods digital is now baked in to the products. This means monitoring performance, monitoring use, reducing meant time to repair, pre-break maintenance. This is especially important in areas such as medical equipment manufacturing or road traffic accident alerts.
The societal implications of digital disruption are yet to be understood. The rise of smart cities, with leaders such as Barcelona, Dubai and Singapore deploying sensor based equipment from everything from traffic to waste management are only just beginning to be felt.
In 2015 the outgoing CEO of Cisco projected that by 2020 many of the US Fortune 500 companies which existed then would be digitally disrupted out of business within five years.
