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The era of the one-size-fits-all product comes to an end

From automobiles to meat cases to artificial hearts, today's smarter products represent a new generation of capabilities that provide increasingly multidimensional and personalized functions. Smart products fuse together sensors, actuators, electronics and mechanical systems. In fact, 66% of manufacturers surveyed include embedded software components in their products. And that embedded software is what creates customized and unique experiences for end users.
 

 

These smarter products don't roll off the assembly line with all those bells and whistles in place. Manufacturers must now master a wide variety of software disciplines, including requirements management, change and configuration management, model-driven software development, quality/test and portfolio management. But few, if any, manufacturers have those skills in-house. So it takes a complex ecosystem of developers, engineers, suppliers and partners to bring smarter products to market.

With this increasing level of integration and interconnection between assorted products, systems, companies and countries, the potential cost of design and development of smarter products will increase dramatically unless the right processes, products and people are put in place. Those can involve:

  • A core competency across a wide variety of software disciplines from requirements management through testing and portfolio management.
  • Quality management that includes traceability and accountability.
  • The ability to transform value chains such that original equipment manufacturers and supplier/subcontractors can assume control of an entire process.
  • Strategic outsourcing of secondary functions so that companies can focus on core competencies while leveraging innovations from external sources.

Smarter products are already transforming the world and the way in which we interact with it. Smarter manufacturing stands to transform the way those products go from a bright idea in the mind of a designer to a must-have gadget in the hands of the consumer.
 

Products that think

 

48% of product companies view 'improving quality (few flaws)' as the key challenge in smarter products.

 

How IBM helps make smarter products

How IBM helps make smarter products

One airplane can contain some six million lines of software code, equivalent to a three-story-high pile of books. That's why Airbus worked with IBM to design, test and manufacture the incredibly complex, integrated systems of mechanical, electronic and embedded software components that help make their planes smarter and safer.

Item-level tracking is one way to generate higher revenues, greater customer service opportunities, wider margins and capital optimization. That's why Volkswagen is deploying the new system following a one-year pilot project in which the automaker and IBM tested RFID technology with suppliers.

Solutions design and development

  • IBM Rational software helps develop increasingly complex, groundbreaking functionality that is the intelligence behind innovation and manages the communication between the interconnected devices.
  • The IBM systems and software e-Kit brings together educational white papers, customer examples, tutorials, webcasts, and best practices for designing, building and managing systems. Learn how Telelogic® and IBM Rational can help you succeed in today's demanding marketplace.
How IBM helps make smarter products

Product Lifecycle Management solutions

  • IBM is a leader in PLM, helping to speed time-to-market and reduce costs through improved design, delivery and lifecycle management of manufactured products.
  • To help manufacturers bridge hardware and software to ensure instrumented products are high quality, efficient and deliver on expectations.

Building blocks for smarter products

  • IBM delivers the microchips that are a key enabler of smarter products, providing the billions of transistors embedded in devices big and small that make goods—and their users—more digitally aware and interconnected.
  • Sensor Solutions, such as RFID tags, 3D barcodes and management systems from IBM, are critical to instrumented products.