EIoT

Abstract

It’s been 20 years since Kevin Ashton coined the term the “Internet of Things” (IoT). At the time, the concept was advanced by the Auto-ID Center global research consortiumasameansoftransformingproductionandsupplychainmanagement.If every product or “thing” could have an RFID tag, then it could potentially “speak” to an RFID reader and provide relevant information like its current location, its production date, and its expected delivery time and location. Products, as they moved through a supply chain, could gain their own sort of “intelligence” through intelligent product agents that negotiated with the rest of the supply chain’s entities to reach their final destination. In short, having real-time product-level granularity of an entire supply chain was viewed as a key to a digitized industrial revolution called Industrie 4.0. In some ways, a lot has changed. In others, much of this original vision has remained the same. No longer is the Internet of Things solely dependent on RFID tags and readers. Instead, the proliferation of sensor technology in the last two decades has tremendously diversified the notion of IoT to include just about any type of sensor with the potential for connection to a communication network. Similarly, communication networks, particularly wireless ones, have experienced similar leaps in innovation and adoption. For perspective, the Wi-Fi Alliance, the trade association responsible for Wi-Fi technology, was founded in the same year (1999) that the term IoT was first used. Finally, mobile computing devices (like smartphones and tablets) have revolutionized the potential for high computing power near or on edge devices. The associated computing platforms (e.g., Android and iOS) has brought about yet another proliferation of IoT-friendly “apps.” This tremendous heterogeneity of new sensors, communication networks, edge computing, and mobile apps has transformed the IoT landscape from its humble beginnings centered on RFID tags and readers. In so doing, IoT has emerged as the dominant new paradigm for the transformation of supply chain operations management.