Steve Kilner and Sean Mann have put together a thought provoking vision of IoT and BPM integration in a video of capabilities they have developed as part of Vuzop.
Vuzop Offers Vision of IoT and BPM Integration
The video offers a “day in the life” view of a business analyst using a variety of features in the Vuzop system to exploit an IoT and BPM integration. A transcript for the video is included, followed by some of my observations on the implications.
My biggest frustration running our logistics operations isn’t that I can’t fix the problems, it’s when I don’t know about the problems.
We have four large warehouses and 100 retail stores. Some of these places I’ve never been to at all.
This vuzop tool enables me to see our system transactions and workflow alongside camera views and sensor data across all our facilities. With that, the intuition that I have from years of experience can quickly spot problems that other people don’t recognize early enough or take seriously enough.
So yesterday, when I was looking at Dallas, something seemed a little off
So I added a data view and saw that the shipments to one of our regions were very sporadic – something wasn’t right with the NorthWest
I went into the warehouse through one of our cameras, and saw shipments for other regions going out at regular intervals, but for the northwest, they were all just sitting there for awhile, and then seeming to go out all bunched together
So I switched to a camera in the Sacramento warehouse and didn’t see anything like that going on
Next I went to back to Dallas. I looked up at the Halo command center to see the running receiving and shipment streams which seemed to be scrolling along and blinking pretty normally
Then I decided to spot check some trucks leaving the warehouse for the Northwest region
Looking at one of those loads I could see the contents looked normal enough. I jumped inside the cab and nothing unusual there either. Truck and driver both in good shape.
I thought maybe I should take a look at some drone footage from outside the warehouse around this time, so I took a second to look at that, but again, everything was looking pretty normal
So I decided to see if there was any unusual sales activity in that region
I switched to the streaming store point of sale view for the NorthWest and it looked like a normal pace and pattern of sales.
So next I decided to look at the workflow for orders and shipments. Here I can see each order as it progresses through the workflow for our ordering and fulfillment processes
Just looking at our BPM workflow model, I had a suspicion about the Release Shipment activity so I decided to add another data view by region.
And now the problem was obvious. Way too many orders were being routed to the Regional Director for approval – just for this region. This had become a bottleneck.
I captured a video of what I saw and emailed it to the director and gave him a call – got the fix started.
By combining animated models of our live workflow with real images and sensor data, it is very easy for me to identify and investigate problems and opportunities. Then I can easily contact the right person and share what I’ve seen.
I hope that little story gave you an idea of how Vuzop could help you. Here’s how it works.
Vuzop brings together three sources of information. Your corporate IT systems, using their transaction and workflow data. Streaming video camera images from your network of cameras. And streaming data feeds from your internet of things devices.
All this can be viewed with a VR headset, on a Windows desktop or on a mobile VR device.
Our vision is that new technologies expand the ability to monitor and control large organizations. By using natural animations of real-time operations combined with camera views and internet of things data, executives can share their experience and intuition throughout the business on a scale previously unimaginable.
Transcript provided by Vuzop
SKMurphy Perspective on Vuzop
I like the vision of linking models of the business to monitoring the activities and switching between models and observations (whether from sensor networks or triggered by human insight) to get to the root cause of business problems. I think they are a little ahead of the curve on business analyst willingness to leverage 3D visualization for problem identification but I find the 2D data fusion visualizations quite compelling.
I think this is closer to the way that IoT is becoming a reality–in support of factory, warehouse, and facilities issues–than all of the blather about the connected home. If we were to measure IoT penetration by number of sensors in a square meter of floor space (or a cubic meter of factory, warehouse, or cargo space) it’s clear it will two or three orders of magnitude higher in business than the home for at least the next five to ten years.