Sunita Shenoy Industrial transformation in the time of COVID-19

Automatic Summary

The Impact of IoT on Industrial Transformation During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Today we are fortunate to have Sunita Shenoy, an expert with extensive experience at Intel, sharing her insights on the role of IoT in industrial transformation during this challenging period shaped by Covid-19.

Overcoming Barriers to the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The industrial revolution occurs every 100 years or so, with a massive economic impact based on the technologies that arrive in the manufacturing space. Today, we stand at the cusp of the fourth revolution, a fusion of digital and physical paradigms. Sunita sheds light on the challenges we face in embracing this revolution and how IoT can bolster our attempts to overcome these barriers.

"Internet of Things has become a reality in all our daily lives. Everything around us is becoming smart, and it's achieved through IoT. This paradigm also applies to manufacturing, leading to what we call Industrial 4.0."

Barriers to Industrial 4.0 Adoption: People and Processes

Sunita highlights that while it is entirely possible, technologically, to usher in the era of Industrial 4.0, the barriers are the people and processes. Our comfort with routine and fear of disrupting working patterns are what slows down the progress of adoption. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, has accelerated the need for industrial modernization.

Covid-19 Disruptions and the Path To Industrial IoT

  1. Worker Shortage: The pandemic has highlighted the existing gap in skills across industries, more so in manufacturing.
  2. Demand Fluctuations: The unprecedented demand for certain goods (sanitizers, baking goods, etc.) during different phases of lockdown threw the manufacturing forecasts off kilter.
  3. Supply and Logistics: With flights and shipments being stopped, sourcing raw materials from different regions became challenging.
  4. Lack of Data: Limited access to data has hindered businesses in making effective decisions.

Embracing Change and Navigating The Next Normal

Covid-19 has underscored the need to accelerate our transformation towards automation, remote working, retooling of processes, and a sharper focus on worker health and safety. Yearning for the next normal, we must stay open to constant learning and improvement amidst relentless change.

"We need to start retooling ourselves constantly to stay at the top of the edge. Embrace change or be the change you want to see in the world." - Sunita Shenoy

Final Thoughts

As we navigate these trying times, let's remember this insightful quote by Andrew Grove – "Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them."

By leveraging the power of IoT and staying open to constant innovation, we can transform these challenges into opportunities for industry-wide enhancements and sustainability. The key lies in accepting that change is inevitable and using this change as a stepping-stone towards a brighter, smarter, and more connected future.


Video Transcription

We have Sunita Shenoy. She is another amazing one. Thanks for joining us and I'm gonna quickly introduce her.She has just an extensive amount of experience in Intel Intel, their chips, their processing and their capabilities has been core to the journey of technology for as long as I can remember in my 15 plus career and the work that she has done there is just so telling and what she we could talk about today about industrial transformation during this time of COVID will allow us all to see the impact and hear from her wisdom and experience in that space.

Thank you so much, Sunita. We are all looking forward to your talk. Glad you made it into the session. Sorry about that. And uh if you wanna try to share your screen, we can make sure we see slides if you have them.

Thank you for the introduction. So um so my name is Sunita as Nico introduced me. I work for Intel Corporation. I'm responsible for the industrial things in industrial internet of things, technologies uh by trade, I, I've been in this technology world for almost three decades.

I started as a uh uh silicon design engineer. Uh uh And, and uh my career grew from there to multiple types of roles, from product management to business leader. Uh I've been through multiple industry transformations and this one is the most exciting. I'm excited to be here.

Thank you for inviting me and hello, everyone around the world, whatever time it is, I hope you and your family are staying safe. So, what I want to talk about is the industrial revolution. Um Every 100 years or so there is an industrial revolution. That means there's a massive economic impact uh based on the technologies that are coming into the manufacturing space. In the 17 hundreds. It was about coal and steam in the 18 hundreds. It was about electrification in the 19 hundreds. It was about bringing computing and communications to the manufacturing and it it has a ripple effect into all the entire infrastructure around it, from supply chain to manufacturing, to consumerization. So this is what we call as the industrial revolution. Today we are in the fourth revolution.

This is the fusion of physical and digital paradigms. What I mean by that is internet of things has become not a hype. It is a reality in all our daily lives. If you see around you, the use of smartphones, smart TV S smart thermostats, smart refrigerators, everything is smart. And how do you make it smart by internet of things? Uh For example, you can connect a sensor, right if you, if you, in case of a smart thermostat sensors are sen sensing the temperature in your house and you can use your smartphone to control the thermostat uh uh based on the sensor of the, you know, the temperature of the house.

That's internet of things. You can connect anything to the internet uh or uh a local server and make data driven decisions on um on specific actions. That paradigm also applies to manufacturing. And we are already here, right? The combination of internet in information technologies that the it industry is focusing on such as uh remote uh uh software defined remote access collaboration tools that we're using right now is an example of an IT technologies uh to an operational technologies like the HV AC system, I talked about the thermostat system as a mechanical system that's operational technologies in the factories.

These are equipment, the the equipments that, that assemble goods or do most of, you know, create certain goods. Um So the the paradigm of it and ot combining together is really the what we call it the industrial 4.0. So the techno technology exists today. The because the cost of sensors, the cost of computing, the cost of communication has all you know, has has become so sophisticated as well as the costs have come down. So it is completely possible to make this happen. However, the barriers are the people and the processes that you know that that uh is holding back the progress of adoption of 4.0 if you think about a human being, um we all think about how can I make my life incrementally better today? Right. I'm comfortable in the way I do things today. Uh What can I do incrementally to make my life better? Right. Uh Even in my own household when smartphones became a reality and my husband and I both work for the tech industry and it took us a long time to get to it to buy, purchase a smartphone because we were so used to our blackberries or other kind of phone. So it's really the mindset of the people on how incrementally they're thinking to make their lives and productivity better versus thinking futuristically on how can I plan for the future? That really is a barrier and then the processes, right?

Why break something that's working uh particularly in manufacturing and factories? If it is a factory in operational mode for, for tens and hundreds of years, why break it un until something goes wrong like this pandemic right now? And that's what I'm here to talk about. So if you look around you, I mean, you can look, this is all public information, but we're also been doing a lot of research within Intel as well as our customers and partners. Manufacturing is f along with every other industry around us, right? And the initial phase of COVID where uh around the march time frame where the entire world came to a standstill. Um you know, the operations, we pause factories, we pause, corporations are pa uh we, we were trying to deal with the situation. Uh We were not sending our employees to work. We still are in that phase in most, in most countries um has caused uh a clear need for uh worker shortage. Um Already manufacturing has a huge gap on skills because the working force in the factories are um aging. Um And, and this COVID has really accelerating the skills gap. Uh many of the decisions that are going to happen post COVID is that people are going to start retiring. Uh We're seeing uh layoffs and furloughs because there's uh you know, uh the factories are closing down, the health of our employees are super important. Uh How do I send an employee in the phase zero or phase one or phase two and, and keep them safe and healthy?

That is number one on every, everybody, every business owner's minds and the most important part of it is demand. If you look at how manufacturing companies across sectors are making decisions is based on demand, right? So if you, if you think about those of those of you live in the United States, we went through phases of consumer goods holding right in, in the, in the first step, there are people holding for some reason, toilet papers and uh hand sanitizers and, and you know, Clorox wipes and so on.

In another phase, we were beginning to hold the baking goods because everybody's working from home, the families are home, they're getting creative. Everybody's a chef at heart. So there was a short supply of uh baker's yeast and and bre bread flour then came to the phase where we were shopping uh like mad for grooming supplies because there were no services available outside. So we were becoming the hairdressers and we, you know, and so on. Um So that that supply or demand was never forecasted. So hence, manufacturing could not fathom how, how to forecast of those products would not, you know, could not never have for, you know, um plan for this kind of uh um uh pandemic uh um disruption, right? So that really has an implication on manufacturing being paused. Then the supply and logistics. If your raw materials are sourced from a geography where there are there flights have been stopped, the shipments have been stopped, you are screwed up, right? I mean, you don't have raw materials to produce the goods you need. And last but not least the the the the customers we've talked to uh are are struggling with the lack of access to data. They need data to make the right decisions. Which lines do I pause? Which factors do I pause? Where do I put more emphasis on which ones are more productive? Lack of visibility into data is making them realize that they really need to start retooling their processes. What I just talked about as a barrier for industrial four point of transformation.

That's a humongous realization today that, that we need to, there are, you know, we need to start retooling people and processes. Automation is on top of everybody's minds. Uh If you even look around you in the hospitals in the airports, uh we're beginning to see service robots in the, in the factories. We're beginning to see more robots. Um the the and, and the, and the companies and manufacturing owners are beginning to automate the processes.

Then there is a phase where we are already doing equipment, repurposing with the short supply of masks, for example, facial masks and personal protection equipment. A lot of the factories because not their core business started to repurpose their equipment to create masks and ventilator supplies and so on.

They're beginning to strategically plan how they source their suppliers and, and so they have more flexibility in their supply chain. So they don't get, you know, screwed up in, in, in, in when the demand surges, remote working was unheard about in a manufacturing plant. You know, we've had people flying all around the world in factories to, to manage the factory operations. Now we are seeing that even in our own factories, Intel is a large manufacturing company as well and we supply to a lot of our customers. We are reinventing or reimagining the future of work uh our engineers have become so innovative just in the last two months that we are seeing that remote access to a factory to do debug or uh uh problem solving. It's highly possible. Uh This this event could not have been possible without the collaboration tools that exist today are evolving. Um As we as we learn the the kinks of this tool. So there is a new way of working that is emerging even for the manufacturing plants. And last but not least is worker health and safety was always, always a concern for manufacturers. Uh The workers in the factories are one of the main assets. Uh uh You know, so functional safety was, was a critical uh aspect of it. And now this really has become um significantly more uh heightened sense of urgency. So internet of things is solving a lot of these challenges along with Intel being intel, we have a large ecosystem of suppliers and value chain and partners from software vendors to technology vendors.

And in, in just one month, we had so many different innovation come through example with, with the, with the company uh called K I think I think I may be saying the name wrong but there was a dis solution uh create for, for uh social dis uh people in fact and contract tracing.

If they did were CO VD positive, then we saw a lot of uh but then we saw mobile CT scan CT scan solution for monitoring uh the infections of the lung with their mobile mobile um equipment. So to to overcome the shortage of uh um hospital beds and equipment, we had factories um like our partners of inno events in China, uh they began to create um uh ma quality control of mask mask generation, right? There was there was so much demand for mask. There is still a demand for masks in the world that there was a short supply of masks and and it was really important to improve the yield and the quality of the mask coming through the factories and the output of the factories that they began to apply. Intel's A I technology and partner with us to, to produce masks uh as fast as possible with the highest uh productivity. Then there was autonomous robots in hospital, data service robots, you see it in hospitals, you see it in uh airports, you see it in all areas where you can avoid human contact for essentials of life, amazing in no reasons. And there are hundreds more coming. So industrial iot this is what we've been preaching for. The last uh I have been in this in this particular business for the last uh four years.

And I've been, we've been preaching to the world on what is industrial uh internet of things and how it impacts um the business. And here we are, we're already seeing that impact. So if you think about a any business and, and in particularly manufacturing, uh a business owner of a manufacturing company, there are four KPIS that they care about. Number one productivity. How do I get to my products to market faster or um and, and, and with with larger volumes capacity, how do I make sure my products are top quality uh as to retain my brand name, brand name or create a brand name and that counterfeit products are not competing, you know, eating my lunch, safety of paramo important uh uh safety was always a concern in all of the mechanical equipment.

There's a lot of uh you know, challenges of of fires in a uh utility plant or uh in an automated system. If a robot can go a wire, you could, it could cause a human life um to be endangered. Uh So that's of utmost importance and then cost reduction, right? Every business owner thinks about how do I reduce my costs overall cost from uh Capex or operational costs. All of this is possible today uh with the technologies we have, which is called in industrial internet optics technologies, artificial intelligence, right can be used to improve both the productivity of your products as well as quality of your products. Um virtualized technologies that it paradigm uses virtualization, security manageability. All of them can be used to use a software approach to remote managing factories and updating software. Now reconfiguring the factories, right? So it is really important technologies that are becoming uh uh realized today.

Uh Functional safety uh in a layman term, functional safety is uh think about when you're driving a car and uh because of an operator error, you press the accelerator into instead of the brake and the car needs to go uh realize that there's an operation error and fail safe. So fail safe is what is the functional safety. And that's a technology solution way of making sure the equipment that you know, when it malfunctions, it doesn't endanger endanger human lives, that's called functional safety, connectivity and time sensitive networking. So the data that we feed through our network of devices is deterministic uh and and actionable in the real time. OK. These are all technologies that really are available today, solutions from our partners to drive all of these uh business outcomes. Next, I wanna talk about a qu it's a report out from mckenzie and company. They've done a lot of research uh and they are continuing to research the impact of COVID-19. And if you look at every business or every manufacturing um including ours, um there is a uh journey to the next normal, right? So every we all are thinking at work is what is the next normal? Do I want to continue working from home? Is this working for me? Um Is this productive or would I rather be in, in an office? Um So the first phase was always resolved, right? Quickly, get, get our act together, make sure your employees are safe.

Uh understand what the challenges are resilience, prioritize what your most important, you know, assets are KPIS are business priorities and then start to focus on how do we return to the normal? Right. What are the steps we need to take to the phase approach of bringing back uh the economy to normal and the business to normal? And then there is the reimagining. What about, you know, what about the future? How can we mitigate such risks in future? What people and processes and tools should be re re invent today or so we can, we don't run to the same situation in future and then reform, right? We have to reform our processes uh and our thinking across the corporation or across the business. And this is true for pretty much all businesses, but this is utmost importance for manufacturing because it is the cornerstone of or the the center of the industrial revolution. So last, this is my last slide. I leave you with a quote from Andy Crow. Uh He was the father of one of the founding members of the Silicon Valley, um the founder of Intel Corporation, which I'm a proud employee of for almost three decades. I had the good fortune of meeting him in my early years at Intel. And he wrote a book on, on uh on uh uh called para only the paranoid survive. And his quote is bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.

So I'll leave you with this quote and uh I'll pause your um for any questions that you may have. Ok, thank you for your time. I went really fast to make up.

No, you were great. Let's see if there's any questions, any questions for Sunita, put it in the panel, I'll hope that get over to you. Great quote on uh from Andy, you know, a true pioneer. We see so much innovation. Everyone I know um from working at Cisco that I've partnered with at Intel has been so intelligent. And again, watching the innovation come out of there. All right, let's see. Connections made great comments. A lot of thanks for you here. Any questions, any questions as we wrap up?

All right. Let me um put your linked in for you. Is that the best way that you want people to contact you?

Yes. Yeah. Originally. Yeah. All

right. And then uh this is you just making sure doing a lot on IOT. This is the second IOT session we had today. Uh We had Doctor Wei Wang also talking about it from Palo Alto. So again, this is Nicole, I'm your host. I just put her uh link to her linkedin to help you out since you can't do every, we don't have five arms uh to click on all the things.

Uh I can, I can see the window. I

read. Yes, I put her link in there twice so that you can connect with her on linkedin. And this is kind of wrapping our day here just seeing how we can use technology to change the world that we live in and to get through this crisis or any more that may come and hopefully overcome it. And it's a theme through also Lisa's presentation on A I. It's just all of these technologies coming together. And as we wrap kind of this main stage for today, thinking about how all these stars aligned, getting our self-centered, uh contributing to the the pairing of A I to be uh more uh open to letting us live our lives and the capabilities we have here to use technology through uh things like COVID or like I said, anything that may happen.

So, do you have any other final thoughts, Anita? We don't seem to have very many questions coming in.

Uh No, I don't have any final thoughts. Uh I might uh may maybe I do one, right? Uh embrace change, right? Um Or be the change you want to see in the work, right? So just before COVID happened, I happened to speak at a, at a conference on the future of work. And there was a big debate on, hey, the see but and seeds is, is the mindset of corporations where uh if you're not, you're not in the office, you're not productive, right? Uh And, and and the same people who were debating against it even internally to my organization is rethinking. Uh That, that quote is, hey, does productivity really need to be where we sit? You know, I I'm seeing that my, my employees are far more productive uh in this environment than they have in the past because we spend a lot of time traveling between, between the countries and sites and, you know, now we are more accessible, the level playing field. The technology is really great, it's evolving. Um So it's really possible change is possible, embrace change when technology transformations happen, you need to start retooling yourself, right?

Uh I've been working for 30 almost 30 years now and I'm reinventing retooling myself constantly to stay at the top of the edge, right? So um a stagnant in the way you do work is not gonna get you very far.

Great. That is so true. So we just wanna thank you so much. Let's give it up for Sunita before everyone leaves. I have a few calls to action just to keep the conversation going. This is only the first day of an amazing conference. We've seen so many talks and have so many great energies uh around like I said, the spectrum of things that really make our field the place to be. I encourage you to go out and search the hashtag on social WTGC 2020. I put that in the chat, use the networking areas of the event while it's open and hop in to connect to people. It's been awesome seeing, I'm sure Sunitha you've seen this as well. People connecting to you um from all over the world where we could continue to share our passions and uh then lastly, you know, come back tomorrow, log in, it's gonna be more amazing speakers and technical sessions. So meanwhile, just use the networking area to connect. I would love to connect with you as well and just keep the conversation going. I've been live tweeting from tech diva success. Uh So I'm trying to get caught up, I'll get one out soon for this session. And um thank you again and thank you all, you're all part of this. It takes everybody uh to make this event amazing.

And thanks to Anna uh and Ivo who's been helping on the technical side on, on our whole team for putting together this wonderful conference and our sponsors. So make sure you spend some time in the sponsors and in the career area and just make sure you're maximizing your time on hop in to connect and to make this worth it. Thank you everybody. Thank you very much. Great day one. Let's go out and celebrate with a little social media. Thank you again to some of our sponsors that you see here uh from VM Ware, Twitter, Charles Schwab. Uh Lots of those. Thank you again. Have a wonderful day. Thank you, Sunitha. Nice to meet you.

Yeah, thank you for having me. Goodbye. Bye.

Hi everyone. One love. Stay safe. See you tomorrow.