Page 7 - TCExpression TATA Consulting Engineers Limited

Cover Story 07
Digitisation & Digitalisation –
the means to the end
Consumer IoT got easily accepted as the
transformation directly impacts our daily lives.
However, from an industry perspective, transformation
and change is at a tipping point and poised
precariously. The question arises – should legacy
systems be trashed to adopt the new technologies? Is
such capital expenditure necessary and where is the
ROI coming from?
Over the decades, modernisation in operational assets
have been slow. Companies have scaled operations
with greenfield asset investments or inorganic
acquisitions of other facilities. However, a holistic
approach to adoption of new technologies, uniformly,
across manufacturing facilities, has not really
happened. As a result, assets may not be functioning
at their optimal best. While the mindset for adopting
IIoT has set in, the holistic transformation of man,
machine and processes to IIoT is in its infancy.
The research firm Gartner predicts that by 2020
around 25 billion connected ‘things’ will be in use and
their disruptive impact will be felt across all industries
and all areas of society.
McKinsey Global Institute predicts that the IoT will
have a total economic impact of $3.9–11.1 trillion per
year by 2025 (70% within business-to-business).
Research by Cisco suggests that the “Internet of
Everything” – the networked connections between
people, data, processes and things – will create an
economic opportunity of $14.4 trillion for companies
and industries worldwide during the next decade.
A recent joint study by the Global e-Sustainability
Initiative and Boston Consulting Group estimates
that IoT-enabled solutions – increasing the efficiency
of the transmission, distribution and use of power –
could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 9.1 billion
tonnes by 2020, representing 16.5% of the projected
total in that year.
- World Economic Forum Report