Commentary “ Possibility and Challenges of IoT ” 3 (First published in Japanese in July, 2015)

  IoT is translated as the Internet of “things”, more precisely, ” Things is the Internet”, or “thing”. Everything around you is converted into data as needed and tagged with globally identifiable tags that connect to each other across time and place. “Koto”, which had been valuable but could not be economically traded, will emerge one after another as the target of business models. There is no doubt that this will be a revolutionary trend.

  The German government is trying to lead a new industrial revolution with a strategy that puts manufacturing at the core of industrial competitiveness. Germany, whose industrial structure is relatively close to Japan, discussed what the manufacturing industry should be and took action. It should be noted that Germany is not trying to sell things as before, but is trying to sell a production system, that is, a production system, as a power to earn. Production equipment, which is a thing, ends when it is sold, but if you sell software and operation management know-how as a production system as a set, you can earn revenue as a service as long as the factory continues manufacturing.

  The trend toward new services through the integration of manufacturing and information and communication technology ( ICT ) further accelerated in 2014 . In the US , the Industrial Internet Consortium ( IIC ) was launched by five major companies such as General Electric ( GE ) . Since Edison 100 with more than years of history GE further 100 eye to the future after years, were boldly steered toward the service industry.

  This trend in Germany and the US differs from the service industry so far in terms of services based on the “things” of products. By making the product functions essential as a component of the service into a black box, it will be possible to raise barriers to entry and dramatically increase productivity using the IoT platform.