Digital Transformation for a Smarter Tomorrow - Part 2

Part 2 - Smarter Tomorrow

This is continuation of my Part 1 of Digital transformation, where I focused on the ‘Evolution’ by defining the digital transformation in basic principles and sharing the views on evolution of multiple components leading to the surge of digital transformation; In this Part 2, I will focus on visualizing the future of our smarter tomorrow with some early adapters and how the traditional approaches are challenged and transformed.

The future of our smarter world will be a world of connected technologies, connected people & connected enterprises raising the bar on the standard of our living and intelligence; applying the evolution of digital components as discussed in part 1 of the blog: ?

• Future is a cognitive world augmented by exponential technologies and much of intelligence we talk about are just one part of it. Cognizant world will bring the ability to understand, reason, comprehend and react vs. the intelligence world of augmented ability in decision making.
• Future is platform driven everywhere; everyone will be connected - not just machines, but people, businesses & enterprises.
• Future is data driven; everything is all about data that gets captured at a very granular level!
• Future is continuous experimentation & continuous transformation; remember this is a continuous journey of getting better. It's only going to become more exciting & interesting.
• Future is all about embracing change; the more we fall into the cycle of 'learn - unlearn - relearn', the better we will adapt to this change.

There are early indications of the world becoming smarter with these technologies across various domains evolving at various levels; I will explore few of the domains and apply the principles we learned from earlier part 1:

Smart supply chain

Industry sees a shift from a linear supply chain model of Plan -> Make -> Move -> Sell to a ‘Digital Supply Networks (DSN)' with digital core at the center orchestrated through real time data. In the traditional linear model, items travel linearly and any small disruption with a shipper can disrupt the process and miss timelines; digital supply chain on the other hand aims to integrate internal systems and data with external information & partner information bringing not just full visibility to the end to end process, but ability to predict and recommend actions in real time. As discussed in first part of the blog,

• Data collection process in supply chain is evolving through evolution of technology in IOT, EDGE, AR/VR.
• New business processes & business connectivity are established through evolution of industry platforms developed through Blockchain enabling transparency and trust ecosystem
• New applications leveraging AI & ML are helping supply chain to not just forecast based on past data, but predict & react with real time events and data.

The future of smart supply chain is interconnected platforms & interconnected ‘Digital Supply Network’ nodes that will help sense, predict and help evolve & businesses grow together with trust. Read through following articles to understand these technologies and how we at PepsiCo are embracing few of those.

• Smart IOT device being developed by Wiliot – where, the Bluetooth enabled sensor harvests energy from radio waves to power the IOT devices; PepsiCo along with other companies are part of investors now to harness the power of this technology.
• Take a deeper dive into understanding how PepsiCo uses AI to create products by incorporating human empathy and connecting with commercial decision-making process with a data centric approach; PepsiCo is always ahead of the curve: https://venturebeat.com/2021/06/28/how-pepsico-uses-ai-to-create-products-consumers-dont-know-they-want/

Smart agriculture

Automation in agriculture is evolving from the 1st industrial revolution of mechanization; while the past revolutions has converted manual labor work to machine-based work, digital revolution is taking agriculture to an entirely new level.

• Drones & satellite imagery are widely used to understand the topography of the land and help better understand the soil composition; this information helps to be precise in usage of fertilizers, helps understand the better crop variety that can grow in the soil and most importantly protect soil health.
• Advanced IOT sensors are helping to predict soil health accurately and moisture levels, enabling farmers to conserve natural resources like water.
• Advanced weather sensors are helping to better predict the weather and advice farmers on the sowing & harvesting dates by crop to get more yield
• Blockchain based contracts and mobile applications are connecting consumers directly with farmers, thus avoiding the middleman and helping farmers realize more profit for their work.
• Advanced AI & ML based digital solutions are helping to predict yield real-time based on data and help not just maximize the yield but avoids loss and wastage of food.

Digital technologies are certainly leading the way in agriculture and will help lead a smarter tomorrow where healthy food is available to all and wastage of food is controlled. While Government and industry bodies are partnering at large scale to develop digital solutions through these technologies and help the large & diverse farming community, we at PepsiCo being a core Agricultural company operating across 7 Million acres of land, leverage digital technology to positively impact agriculture; read through few articles on we embracing technology in agriculture.

• PepsiCo has set ambitious 2030 goals to leverage technology and scale regenerative farming practices: https://www.pepsico.com/news/press-release/pepsico-announces-2030-goal-to-scale-regenerative-farming-practices-across-7-mil04202021
• PepsiCo boosts precision agri-tech to better support farmers for in-field decisions: https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2019/06/05/PepsiCo-boosts-precision-agri-tech-for-Walkers-Lay-s-and-Doritos-brands
• PepsiCo?and Corteva Agriscience are partnering to?unlock the potential of the oat through genomic sequencing!
• PepsiCo building a greener food system through Technology, collaboration and policy: https://www.newfoodmagazine.com/article/133293/pepsico-greener-food-system/

Smart factory

Smart factory allows factory managers to leverage the evolution of technology components to collect and analyze data to predict, sense and make smart decisions that will help optimize production and follow adaptive manufacturing practices. This includes concepts of:

• Connected machines: IOT is playing a major role in connecting all the equipment’s thus giving full visibility of manufacturing assets and their real time health indicators. While the evolution of technology within IOT space from wireless to radio wave powered devices are accelerating the connectedness of machines to collect more data, the upcoming 5G and EDGE technologies will further accelerate the cognitive and intelligence processes by bringing more computing power at the edge of these machines to predict and make decisions.
• Connected operations: Operational technology (OT) in shop floor of factory and information technology (IT) at corporate level are coming together more closely through the technology evolution and creating new opportunities for factory managers to transform their operations through real-time communications across these connected systems. While advanced sensors are evolving to capture data through variation in sound, vibration and other parameters, advance computing power and EDGE architectures are providing the computing ability & in-process analytical ability to predict & act in real-time helping the overall processes. Operations at shop floor from production planning, detailed scheduling, raw material staging are now more interlinked with equipment’s and machines through low power Wide Area Networks (LoRa, LTE)?via flexible industrial interfaces providing unparalleled near real time ability to enable planners plan real time and optimize asset usage, technicians predict and maintain the assets.
• Digital manufacturing: At the core of Industry 4.0, it’s digital manufacturing which includes advanced manufacturing technologies like 3D printing becoming omnipresent from construction to health care and revolutionizing how things can be manufactured, AR / VR capabilities through devices like Microsoft HoloLens for factory maintenances are done, digital twin technologies are enabling simulation of factory operations for extreme conditions at ease and developing faster solutions for problems predicted.

While smart factory leads the Industry 4.0 agenda, at PepsiCo, we continuously implement new technologies across manufacturing sites to not just advance our ways of working, but also to positively impact our planet; read through following links to understand more:

• Inside look at how PepsiCo is looking to extend its manufacturing control processes with machine learning to assess quality and improve production efficiencies: https://www.automationworld.com/products/data/blog/13319607/how-fritolay-applies-machine-learning
• PepsiCo harnessing the power of AI to positively impact our planet by conserving water usage in factories https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/15/tech/ai-water-meter-wint-spc-intl/index.html
• PepsiCo’s digital first mindset approach to continuously implement new technologies to improve the work environment for our employees, especially our frontline teams. https://stories.pepsicojobs.com/the-innovative-tech-tools-energizing-our-global-frontline/

Smart healthcare

Whether it tele-medicine or vaccine production at speed; we all have witnessed how digital technologies has helped shorten the current pandemic; the pace is further going to exponentially evolve into medical research for advanced cure, make health-care available to all citizens and provide a better healthcare for all. N Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons captured the current situation of medical care in India in his book ‘Bridgital Nation’ and also have provided insights on how digital technology evolution can help address this divide and bring healthcare to all corners of the nation and help under privileged in a tremendous way; the link here captures the gist of the thoughts he had shared and it will be worth a read to understand if you have not read the book already. ?

Smart education

Information is now at fingertips for students with existing technologies; pandemic has taught us that home schooling with digital technologies really work. Advanced network & communication capabilities are helping with seamless connection for enabling a virtual class room, AI is helping curate courses and make it more personalized at individual level, low / no-code application developments are helping kids gain education in computer programming and information technology than any other generations in the past. Education as a process has evolved from learning to know information to learning to ask the right questions to tap the information that already exists in the world wide web technology. Certainly, the augmentation of technology in education is making the new generation much smarter than any other previous generations and this will continue to grow more. While there are more work to be done to solve for the digital divide and make the digital education available for all students irrespective of where they are and their economic status, but the possibilities of digital technology to give a fair education to all world population is just at the reach of us now.

And we can?quote many examples across industries at domain. Hoping the few examples narrated helps paints the picture on how the current trend of digital transformation is evolving and changing the way we connect and leading to a smarter tomorrow.

At PepsiCo, we are embracing digital and the evolution of these digital components to define our Smarter organization of tomorrow; what makes unique is our people; we have incredible strength of great leaders, associates who make a great ecosystem and lead the transformation. This is an environment where the learning curve never stops and here you will find the company strives for a Purpose of existence in the world.

We continuously raise the bar on talent & diversity and we have exciting jobs posted at www.pepsicojobs.com; while we have great openings for Technology across all countries, at Tech Hub Hyderabad, India, we have some incredible openings to work with some great minds and talents to explore the art of possibilities and transform our capabilities leveraging technology.

This ends the second part of the blog; stay tuned for the Part 3, where I will focus on how organizations can evolve in their digital transformation journey, how IT enterprises and IT functions in an organization can evolve and most importantly, how we in PepsiCo are embracing these to evolve and mature in our digital journey.