Way back as far as last month (in the Twitter world a long time ago, I know), there was something pretty cool that was demoed at SAPPHIRE NOW 2018 and worthy of a closer look. SAP Partner Movilitas put together a fun Internet of Things demo that represented a "production to consumption" scenario, complete with Lego silo and train!But let's backup. Just over a year ago (so ancient history, I know), SAP introduced SAP Leonardo to power the intelligent enterprise with intelligence technologies for every enterprise process, to facilitate creating the best outcomes. As part of SAP Leonardo, there are these core intelligent technologies (e.g., the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Blockchain, etc.) that come together to make the intelligent enterprise possible. And those technologies are the backbone of several SAP Leonardo solutions.
So what Movilitas did was take a few of those said solutions, combined them together, and created an end-to-end "production to consumption" scenario. And they did this all in just two weeks. Essentially, the scenario works like this:
Food is initially produced and stored at its origin. Here, key indicators such as temperature, humidity, and quantity are digitally accessible in near real-time. This is made possible by the SAP Leonardo solution SAP Connected Goods, which is designed is maximize product value through IoT-enabled inventory, storage, utilization, and consumption insights.
But also, another solution comes into play, SAP Edge Services, for those locations that are more remotely located (as can be the case with food production and storage). SAP Edge Services allows for business to run smoothly without any dependency on bandwidth, resilient connectively, or cloud-based processing power.
Put another way, SAP Edge Services allows you to take advantage of your IoT data locally, wherever it is, and then takes care of reconciling/syncing it with your business systems opportunistically. So all those key indicators that were mentioned before as readily available in near real-time independently of other environmental limitations… That's thanks, in part, to SAP Edge Services.
Next in the production-to-consumption journey often comes additional processing and transport. This can include the complication of the end customer wanting full visibility as to which batch was sourced from which origin as well as knowledge of how processing and transport affected product purity. But not to worry, this visibility is accomplished with SAP Leonardo solutions working in tandem, often with some of the same indicators mentioned earlier still being analyzed: temperature, humidity, quantity, etc.
At some point, said product will end up in a retail environment wherein the same key indicators (as well as some new ones) are still in play. For example, if the finished product ready for consumption is a specialized, single-source consumable food that needs to be at a certain temperature in a fridge on display in a store, temperature is still clearly important. But now in this environment, perhaps interactions with the fridge (e.g., how often and how long the door is opened/closed) are also important to the retailer as a way to measure consumer interest levels.
And finally, the end consumer is happy to be given a high-quality product with the confidence that its ideal state and consistency has been preserved along the way from production to consumption. I should also note that throughout this entire experience, there is another SAP Leonard IoT solution tirelessly working behind the scenes to facilitate bringing all the sensor data and business operations data into one workspace. It's called SAP Leonardo IoT Bridge.
But enough of my words on the screen! Upender Solanki, North America Delivery Lead for Movilitas says it best when he says:
“The vast portfolio of SAP Leonardo Internet of Things solutions is exactly what we need to help our customers outperform their competitors. From solutions like SAP Connected Goods for real-time product insights to SAP Edge Services for extending intelligence to the edge, we are able to deliver a complete ‘production to consumption’ experience to bring fresh and high-quality foods from their origin to their final destination.
By leveraging the power of SAP Leonardo IoT, our customers gain full transparency into where their food is from, where it has been, where it is now, and where it is going. At the end of the journey, our customers’ customers – the end consumers – are able to rest assured with guaranteed authenticity of the source and state of their food."
I almost forgot, now let's take a look at the story in Lego form:
And finally, here's an interview with both Upender Solanki and Elvira Wallis, SVP of the SAP IoT Smart Connected Business team where they discuss how quickly and effectively this all came together:
In the end, this is just one example of many that show SAP Leonardo in action, in this case, making business more intelligent along the way from production to consumption.
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