Outcomes, Insights, and Best Practices from IIC Testbeds: Track & Trace Testbed
example, retrieving the data from the tightened tools meant identifying the right interfaces for tracing, requiring the development of specific APIs.
From the customer perspective, the implementation of the testbed has been so successful that it is perceived as a competitive advantage, making them reluctant to go public in describing their successes. Not a bad outcome to report!
LESSONS LEARNED
A Never-Ending Story
In the Track element of the testbed, one important lesson learned is the realization that this is a never-ending story. Once the customer became involved, use cases were quickly added, resulting in specialized subsolutions, or extensions to support specific combinations of tools – tightening, riveting, welding, etc. Moving a testbed into a production environment as quickly as possible is recommended by the testbed team, as they experienced such great acceleration of their innovations with the help of customers. Without taking this step, and taking it early, a testbed often remains in a theoretical stage and cannot help quite as much in speeding the solution to market.
Customer Involvement
Another key lesson learned is the invaluable feedback received by involving a customer or customers in the early stage of the project – find a way to set up the project in a productive environment; finding a customer willing to support, provide feedback and endure the unforeseen consequences( good and bad).
The users are the very key of the testbed. They were given some initial ideas and now the testbed is pushed forward by the users who were not previously privy to this new technology: They are now asking for more. The users run the tests as they are running the technology and provide feedback to the testbed team on all aspects of the deployment. The users provide very profound information from the utilization of the technology and the ideas provided to them.
IIC Influence
Discussing the project within the IIC assists in finding partners, accelerating those conversations and drawing attention to the implementation of the given technology standards. For the first phase of the testbed, it was very easy for Bosch to connect with Cisco and TechMahindra. Then, a joint IIC and Plattform Industrie 4.0 event triggered a second phase where SAP and Bosch collaborated to accelerate the forklift use case.
The approach taken by this testbed, building a small ecosystem with partners and customers, enabled them to go to market with their solution more rapidly than they had expected. The ecosystem they developed and the resulting management attention is a very powerful combination.
Early Management Involvement
And lastly, in terms of lessons learned and advice to others, involving management as early as possible is of great importance in developing the plan from the user perspective but also from the strategic business perspective. Hosting the testbed
IIC Journal of Innovation 47