EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Deliver transformational business value by developing differentiated capabilities
The pace of new technologies provides organizations the ability to deliver greater operational efficiency, rapidly respond to customer / consumer demands and adapt to dynamic market conditions.
Applying new technologies in a controlled and agile approach allows organizations to implement new business capabilities and accelerate business value.
The computer vision is a unique sensor that can detect, identify and determine changes of multiple objects within a wide field of view. This capability provides detailed operational insights across the enterprise with the required development and training of underlying algorithms and models.
Sensors are the key underlying technology of Internet of Things (IoT). Organizations are working to understand asset condition, location and status while automating business processes.
Machine Learning is a foundational capability that drives computer vision, sensors and a broad range of applications such as image recognition, sentiment analysis and data insights. Through combination of open source and proprietary models, business leaders can drive efficiencies to allow employees to focus on more meaningful work.
Autonomous Vehicle development requires integration of a diverse range of technologies to perform basic functions and automate more complex operational processes. The sustained investment and development of autonomous platforms over the last decade is enabling market and industry transformation
The emergence of new communications protocols provides represent a growing demand signal for low latency, high bandwidth and dynamic management of communication systems. Integrating new communication capabilities into enterprise operations continues to create both opportunities and challenges.
This branch of machine learning is unique and has matured to provide the basic understanding of human speech and written expression across multiple languages. Moving beyond basic recognition of common terms to understand the naissances of humor, satire and sarcasm require additional training and development
While the popular science fiction idea of a super suit is still far into the future, the maturity of both powered and un-powered human augmentation of both joints and major muscle groups provides employees with increased metabolic efficiency, lifting capacity and reduced risk exposure.
The application of augmented and virtual reality consists of display hardware, content creation and production; and communication. Each of these capabilities continue to mature to help employees and patients manage critical tasks in the field or remotely by accessing and applying expert knowledge
While traditional manufacturing is far more efficient and cost effective for mass produced items, additive manufacturing provides enterprises with the ability to rapidly create new components and products.
These robotic platforms provide increasing worker augmentation and automation capabilities tailored to specific industrial and manufacturing use cases that reduce worker exposure to dangerous and repetitive tasks. These solutions increasing move beyond protected environments.
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Precision Location Services
Location of critical assets in GPS denied or degraded environments results in operation impacts and safety risks. Using advance sensors, computer vision and geographical information systems (GIS), achieved precision asset location within 0.5 meters without GPS availability.
Key Industry: Transportation and Logistics
Enablng Technology
Sensors, Computer Vision and Ubiquitous Communication
Business Opportunities
Improved Asset Visibility
Impact
Improve asset location accuracy to 0.5 meters in disadvantage environment allowing for improved transportation velocity and safety.
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Ensuring Precision Location for Asset Optimization
Enterprises seek to understand the condition, location and status of every asset to optimize process, lower costs and improve safety. Location of critical assets in GPS-denied or degraded environments results in operational impacts and safety risks. Using advanced sensors, computer vision and geographical information systems (GIS), achieved precision asset location within 0.5 meters without GPS availability.Key Industry: Transportation, Logistics
Enabling Technology
Sensors, Computer Vision, Ubiquitous Communication
Business Opportunities
Improved Asset Monitoring
Impact
Improve asset location accuracy to 0.5 meters in disadvantage environment allowing for improved transportation velocity and safety
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Building Communication Architectures for Real-Time Asset Tracking
Deploying sensors across the enterprise provides the ability to collect critical conditions and status of both items and capital equipment. These distributed sensors require a robust communications architecture to connect sensing systems with computer capabilities on the edge or in the cloudKey Industry: Transportation, Energy, Manufacturing
Enabling Technology
Ubiquitous Communications
Business Opportunities
Improved Asset Monitoring
Impact
Critical transport layer to orchestrate business process enabling operational efficiency and safety improvements
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Reducing Material Sorting and Inspection Times
Transportation and Manufacturing companies receive, process and ship billions of items annually. Improving the receipt, inspection and movement of materials drives both manufacturing and supply chain efficiency. Traditional approach using outdated and expensive sensing technology led to an inspection and distribution failure rate resulting in manual rework. By applying computer vision and other sensing modalities, organizations will reduce their sorting and inspection times.Key Industry: Transportation, Manufacturing
Enabling Technology
Computer Vision, Sensors
Business Opportunities
Improved Asset Monitoring, Supply Chain Efficiency
Impact
Improve accuracy from 65% to 92% for incoming materials while reducing per unit costs by 75%
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Improving Transportation Infrastructure Structural Inspections
Aging infrastructure and regulations require organization to inspect a large percentage of their assets annually. These inspections of critical transportation infrastructure allows for the safe and efficient movement of goods and services. Current manual inspection processes limits inspections causing increased potential disruptions. By applying unique sensors to conduct inspections, organizations can meet their obligations and ensure the safe operations of critical infrastructure.Key Industry: Transportation
Enabling Technology
Sensors, Computer Vision
Business Opportunities
Improved Asset Monitoring, Critical Infrastructure Inspection Automation
Impact
The ability to increase inspection quality and frequency improves the safe and effective transportation operations
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Reducing Labor Cost for Material Handling
Manual inspection process of materials and components items requires up to 90 – 180 minutes depending on shipment quantity and type. Developing sensors to inspect materials during the receiving process, enterprises would improve the inspection quality while decreasing labor costs.Key Industry: Manufacturing
Enabling Technology
Sensors, IoT
Business Opportunities
Material Handling Automation
Impact
Approximately 20,000 labor hours reallocated to other critical manufacturing tasks
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Automating Media Package Development
Current process to develop marketing material requires a tedious and highly manual process. Additionally, the manual process does not scale to support hyper-personalization needed to drive revenue growth. Developing automated marketing material through the application of both natural language process and computer vision models.Key Industry: Retail
Enabling Technology
Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning
Business Opportunities
Content Development Automation and Customer Activation and Engagement
Impact
Accelerate product design and manufacturing by 17%
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Designing Advanced Long Range Sensors to Detect Material Anomalies
Determining material faults and anomalies in large infrastructure requires frequent sampling. By applying targeted energy waveforms through linear structures, organizations can achieve real-time infrastructure monitoring.Key Industry: Construction
Enabling Technology
Sensors, Machine Learning
Business Opportunities
Improved Asset Monitoring
Impact
Reduced primary inspections by 50% and focusing inspection process
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Increasing Supply Chain Velocity by Automating Material Handling
The receipt, storage and movement of materials provides opportunities for automation and process efficiency. The manual process for determining location and movement is highly inefficient. By automating the asset location, organizations can improve material handling and inventory management efficiency.Key Industry: Manufacturing, Transportation
Enabling Technology
Computer Vision
Business Opportunities
Inventory Management Automation
Impact
Reduce asset inventory for 12 hours to real-time
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Improved Equipment Availability through Enhanced Maintenance Operations
Moving to in-sourced maintenance operation responsible for ensuring high availability of thousands of complex capital assets is a significant challenge. Additionally, 40% of skilled workers could retire in the next few years. To mitigate the risk from employees leaving, organizations must invest significant resources in training and technology to support maintenance, improve current procedures and enhance worker safety.Key Industry: Manufacturing
Enabling Technology
Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Machine LearningBusiness Opportunities
Meaningful Work Through Automation Employee Safety
Impact
Reduce maintenance repair time and improve asset availability
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Increasing Equipment Availability and Uptime
Consistent component failure required frequent procurement of individual parts sold as a complete kit leading to increased cost and waste. By “printing” required components when needed, maintenance teams can lower costs.Key Industry: Transportation and Logistics
Enabling Technology
Additive Manufacturing
Business Opportunities
Sustainability
Impact
Additive manufacturing cost combined with intellectual property restrictions diminished ROI; however, change in source terms and conditions identified provided a mechanism for future Additive Manufacturing and Augmented Reality opportunities
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Inventing an Enhanced Non-Conductive Material
Current bonding techniques created critical failure points that increased maintenance costs and reduce availability. Developing a next generation material that is non-conductive with enhanced bonding properties, accelerates supply chain transportation.Key Industry: Transportation
Enabling Technology
Advanced Materials
Business Opportunities
Ensuring Supply Chain Agility
Impact
Up to 40% reduction in current maintenance and replacement costs
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Improving Robotic Surgery Utilization
The development of advanced robotic systems to perform medical procedures requires trained and proficient medical professionals to maximize utilization and deliver improved patient outcomes. Telementoring allows new robotic surgery users to connect with experienced users. To accomplish effective telementoring, intuitive collaboration platforms that provides senior healthcare professionals to train new users are critical.Key Industry: Healthcare
Enabling Technology
Computer Vision
Business Opportunities
Agile Product Development, Patient Safety
Impact
The application of innovative collaboration platforms directly impact the utilization of robotic healthcare systems. By evaluating both healthcare and other industry platforms, the chosen solution can provide a competitive advantage
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Developing an Automated Material Handling Systems
Loading large transportation systems requires a combination of lift systems with connectors. Automating the loading process to eliminate safety risks and accelerate the loading process is critical to ensuring a timely estimated time of departure (ETD).Key Industry: Transportation
Enabling Technology
Robotics
Business Opportunities
Process Automation
Impact
The ability to automate the loading process reduced worker exposure and decreased the loading times
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Designing Automated Drayage Transportation Networks
The short movements between supply chain nodes requires significant labor and resources. Automating drayage operations within industrial parks provides both labor savings but optimizes the realtime delivery for follow-on movements.Key Industry: Manufacturing, Transportation
Enabling Technology
Additive Manufacturing
Business Opportunities
Ensure Supply Chain Agility
Impact
Allocating critical labor resources to other high priority tasks while automating drayage operations provides greater efficiency and workforce retention
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Reducing Workplace Injuries through Augmented Situational Awareness
Workplace slips / trips and falls in industrial environments represent a large number of reportable incidents annually. Obstructive pathways, slippery surface and other hazards injure employees, impacting employee wellness and operational efficiencies. Augmenting employee situational awareness with advanced sensors provides not only increased safety, but also a platform for enhanced workplace communication.Key Industry: Manufacturing
Enabling Technology
Computer Vision, Sensors, Augmented Reality
Business Opportunities
Employee Safety, Employee Development and Training
Impact
50% reduction in annual reportable incidents and worker compensation claims
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Building Communication Architectures for Real-Time Asset Tracking
Deploying sensors across the enterprise provides the ability to collect critical conditions and status of both items and capital equipment. These distributed sensors require a robust communications architecture to connect sensing systems with computer capabilities on the edge or in the cloudKey Industry: Transportation, Energy, Manufacturing
Enabling Technology
Ubiquitous Communications
Business Opportunities
Improved Asset Monitoring
Impact
Critical transport layer to orchestrate business process enabling operational efficiency and safety improvements
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Providing Persistent Field Communication in Disadvantaged Environments
Communicating with field workers across diverse geography in remote locations represents a severe safety risk. By developing advanced communication capability that leverages existing communication channels and enabled capital assets as additional communication nodes, remote workers can operate more safely and more efficiently.Key Industry: Transportation, Energy
Enabling Technology
Ubiquitous Communications, Sensors
Business Opportunities
Worker Safety, Secure Communications
Impact
Reduced fatalities and injuries
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Implementing Digital Triage and Patient Support
Healthcare consumers struggle with accessing accurate and curated information to answer health related questions that may determine the need for medical care or ongoing treatment for conditions. Leveraging intelligent agents to provide real-time access to highly curated information and integration to tele-health operations expands healthcare access.
Key Industry: Healthcare
Enabling Technology
Digital Agents, Machine Learning
Business Opportunities
Patient Safety
Impact
Improved patient satisfaction and user experience
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Improving Position Assignment Resolution Process
Diverse labor agreements govern work assignments across multiple industries. Forced assignments and/or no assignment notices frequently lead to disputes requiring multiple call center interactions to resolve. To help proactively resolve work assignment questions and concerns, organizations deploy digital agents to provide consistent responses that conform to unique labor agreements.Key Industry: Any with Labor Agreements and Work Assignment Processes
Enabling Technology
Digital Agents
Business Opportunities
Meaningful Work Through Automation, Workforce Optimization
Impact
Improved worker quality of life and decreased labor grievances filed
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Augmenting Field Maintenance Workers
Rugged field conditions limit maintenance and installation operations requiring increased time to repair critical assets. With augmented lift capabilities, maintenance employees can improve field repairs and enhance employee safety.Key Industry: Oil and Gas
Enabling Technology
Exoskeletons
Business Opportunities
Worker Safety
Impact
Increased metabolic performance and enhanced joint protection allowed for great efficiency, reduced injuries and higher employee retention
ENGAGEMENT BRIEF
Reducing Factory and Warehouse Material Handling
Despite long standing human factors engineering, many assembly and material handling positions result in repetitive stress injuries. Additionally, physical demands reduce the available workforce. By providing human augmentation for specific tasks and movements, workers can have improved work place performance while reducing injuries.Key Industry: Manufacturing
Enabling Technology
Exoskeletons
Business Opportunities
Worker Safety
Impact
Worker Compensation claims for back injuries average $40,000 per incident. Reducing reportable incidents protects workers and cuts costs. Additionally, the human augmentation allows for more workers to participate in a variety of material handling and manufacturing jobs
“
“2THEDGE’s application of computer vision technology to improve supply chain workflow and increase throughput is the best example of pioneering advanced technology.”
– Transportation Executive
“
“2THEDGE’s experimentation as a service allows business leaders to test what is possible and provide a starting point to deliver technology solutions that aren’t available to anyone else.”
– Healthcare Executive
“
“Each year we always compare the Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 20XX announced at a big conference to see how many years we are ahead of “thought leaders.”
– Retail Executive
Step Forward to Harness Disruption
Reach out to learn how 2THEDGE’s real-world emerging trend insights will accelerate your business transformation journey.
Phone: (972) 752-8781
Email: STEP_Forward@2thedge.com