Post Covid-19: Reimagining the value chain with IoT

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As India rallies and we move past the initial response phase to Covid-19, we now face a different kind of challenge. While staging India’s back to business strategy, we need to not only save lives, but livelihoods too. Given the unscripted nature of this urgency, businesses have been forced to adapt and adopt new technologies in the pursuit of business preservation. Cloud usage and remote collaboration witnessed accelerated adoption equivalent of a few years in a matter of a few weeks, as they powered work from home seamlessly.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a formidable and viable solution as we reimagine the future of work, to ensure business continuity and uphold employee safety. As we align to an industry wide change in philosophy as work from home becomes a mainstay, IoT can power us back.

Let’s take a look at the manufacturing units that have resumed crucial operations; they are now facing the challenge of keeping their employees safe and businesses solvent. To navigate this, manufacturers are establishing risk mitigation programs and redesigning their shop floors with fewer workers to reflect the staggered shifts and working around the principles of physical distancing. This process has accelerated the curiosity towards solutions that can be the guiding light on productivity, safety, energy management, automation and even predictive and remote maintenance.

While IoT will address all of the above, reimagining our return to business does not just stop there. More than the obvious analytics led efficiencies offered by the technology, businesses will be better suited to drive meaningful change if they fully absorb the philosophy that IoT will bring in. What does that mean? It means a cultural change at a pan organisational level, where old systems must give way to newer mindsets, driving new business values. It means realising the opportunity to build an industry 4.0 environment with a connected ecosystem where various processes, departments and machines can communicate with one another. Beyond businesses, as good governance makes headway, city wide adoption will see solutions like smart metering, smart lighting become mainstream to drive sustainability.

In this context, it is important to make note of another philosophical change. The goal of automation today has shifted from ‘Doing more with less’ to ‘Sustainability and smooth operations'. Wearables such as smart watches can be combined with environmental sensors to monitor employees’ safety as well as the environment they are working in. By tracking physical fitness such as heartbeat and skin temperature, sensors help in early detection of potential problems and health conditions, basis which employers can take the necessary preventive action. In a hypothetical and undesirable scenario, if an employee tests positive for Covid-19, organisations can use positioning data from the wearable devices to notify other employees who might have come in proximity. Further, access cards and other wearable devices can also help in informing the management about under-manned areas in case of employee unavailability.

Here on, the private sector will need to coordinate closely with the public sector to forge plans that are essential to both public safety and the solvency of the workforce, while keeping the lights on operations. The utilitarian nature of solutions will be viewed from a broader lens for its capability to empower against a number of scenarios. IoT will own this all-encompassing duty and bring us closer to a connected ecosystem and its automation will bring us into closer working relationships with machines and AI. It is only natural that IoT will become a key pillar of the digitisation journey. It is this change in culture and philosophy at an industry level that will not only ensure a safe and successful return of our economic drive, but also safeguard against future setbacks.

The writer is Head – Internet of Things (Business Unit) at Tata Communications

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