Portable NIRONE Material Scanners – An Enabling Technology in Changing Working Environment
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a huge shift in the ways of working. Due to governments making significant interventions by locking down practically the whole society in many countries, businesses have rapidly been forced to adjust their operations. As a result, millions of people have moved their work from offices to their homes.
The pandemic forces companies to accelerate their global digital transformation. Remote workers are more likely to work across five or more teams which makes teams fragmented. This is a huge challenge as everyone should have access to the same information regardless of one’s location to get the job done and to focus on resolving important issues.
The shift in working patterns
Covid-19 could permanently shift working patterns. Companies across the globe are forced to take on remote working by the pandemic and have found that their employees may not want to return to the office once the closures are lifted. According to Gartner, remote work will become increasingly common as 41 % of the employees are likely to continue to work outside the office. On the other hand, some employers may find it tempting to cut costs by downsizing office space, cut travel expenses with remote meetings, to name a few changes we may see in the future.
This great shift in the work calls for new ways and methods of working as well as new tools to support more efficient work. PwC, Accenture, and Gartner called for the adoption of new technologies to support new working culture and making organizations fast and flexible.
Technology enablers are needed to make the remote work possible regardless of the industry or profession. The switch to remote working is forcing the industry to evaluate their position when it comes to digitalization as companies need to think of alternative ways to conduct business. Agility, scalability and automation and big data will be the watchwords for this new era of business, and those that have these capabilities now will be the winners
Accelerating Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) adoption for enabling automation and reducing operational dependencies. Today organizations are increasingly using AI and ML to inject smart decisions, powered by data-driven insights, into their daily operations.
How about laboratories, R&D or product development?
Typically, quite a bit of the R&D takes place in the lab environment. Especially, material sensing and chemicals require laboratory tools and space. Often, technology development also takes place in labs. Then, laboratories are usually a concentration of expensive analytics tools and technology and need to be staffed.
When Covid-19 really hit, most of the R&D was put on hold due to social distancing halting the development processes. To rebound and re-group from this takes time. What if some of this work could have been done remotely in smaller teams and data collected to the cloud and analyzed there with AI and machine learning? How would a portable analytics lab sound or remotely real-time managed and controlled industrial processes?
Emerging technologies enable distribution of work and activities
Flexibility and portability: The NIRONE Sensors and Scanner are fully portable enabling the material sensing applications and material testing practically anywhere and are capable of connecting and logging into the data cloud infrastructure.
As Robert Zimmerleiter at RECENDT says: ”Using chemometric modeling, machine learning algorithms, and artificial intelligence, the data from multiple NIRONE sensors can be analyzed automatically and merged with other process data to deliver valuable information about the production process in real-time.”
The cloud infrastructure makes the data available for anyone working in the project anywhere in the world. The centrally managed cloud enables data analytics, trend monitoring, preventive maintenance, and improved customer support and can be something from the fields of smart industry, smart homes or offices, smart agriculture, or completely new portable devices for officials or even the law enforcement.
Additionally, the cloud infrastructure enables practically limitless scalability and high performance of NIR technology-based measurements. The centrally managed cloud enables data analytics, trend monitoring, preventive maintenance, and improved customer support. Safe cloud technology offers better security: ”We use the highest quality data security in our cloud.” says Uula Kantojärvi CTO of Spectral Engines.
Deploying a cloud-based solution will enable seamless access to applications and resources to remote workers and provide them the flexibility they need in an increasingly mobile environment improving productivity.
References
Accenture (2020) 5 Priorities to Help Reopen and Reinvent Your Business. Available online.
Accenture (2020) Full Value. Full Stop. How to scale innovation and achieve full value with Future Systems. Available online.
Chimenti, R. V. (2020) The New Technologies Shaping Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
Deloitte (2020) Remote Collaboration - Facing the Challenges of COVID-19.
Gartner (2020) 9 Future of Work Trends Post-COVID-19. Available online.
Spectral Engines (2019) Industry 4.0 And How Smart Sensors Make The Difference.
Spectral Engines (2019) Sensor technology will revolutionize the way we see the world around us.
Spectral Engines (2020) New Business With Novel Material Sensing Solutions.
Zimmerleiter, R. (2020) The Key Enabling Technology for Smarter Processes: Compact, Rugged and Cost-Efficient NIR Spectroscopy Sensing Solutions
