People in industrial environments are a big part of the processes that lead to products coming out of a factory or delivering a parcel to your doorstep. Optimising processes in an industrial environment is one aspect of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The last episode of #IoTFriday gave the introduction to the IIoT.
Connecting people in IIoT environments can pose threats to privacy. Your boss could potentially see how hard each individual is working. If we anonymize the information and take a look at process optimization, interesting data is popping up. All of sudden the working conditions of employees can improve. Safety hazards are detected that otherwise remained unnoticed. Analysing the human factor of IIoT with IoT technology has potential to optimize processes and create a healthy and safe workforce at the same time. Wearables and inventions like the Levi’s-Google jeans jacket play a big role here.
Replacing people with robots is going on, but no threat to the current workforce. Bots become co-workers. Introducing chatbots in working environments creates a vocal interaction. Workers can tell a machine to slow down when having their hands full. A chatbot can present year figures and answer detailed questions on all the figures.
We ask Amazon the question of they use their chatbot technology in their logistics process. This is an open question and in a future episode of #IoTFriday, we want to come back with an answer to this question.
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