Business and Personal Applications of Smart Technology

Every aspect of your business is digitally defined; it’s just that, until modern times, technology wasn’t at a point to most effectively utilize such data. As smart innovations increasingly demonstrate, virtually all aspects of life and business have integers. Numbers make up everything.

Meanwhile, the SMART acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. A SMART approach to business management tends to be a good approach; and it’s definitely a wise move to utilize data when it can be leveraged.

In the tech context, the term ‘smart’ has a different meaning. Smart technology helps provide businesses a framework from which to capitalize on increasingly tangible data applications. Accordingly, in this writing we’ll focus on business and personal applications of increasingly convenient smart tech. Consider the following areas of life such technology is revolutionizing:

Smart Homes

One of the most important innovations of the last decade is the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT utilizes WiFi and the internet to make it so you can control basically any electrical operation from your device; and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Technological security can be automated using smart technology. This makes your home more comfortable, convenient, and often more fun. As an example, you might install multicolored LED lighting that can be controlled right from your smartphone. Between convenient IoT applications and those purely for the fun of it, you’ve got a sort of digital ecosystem to work with.

Beyond the residential, what’s the application for commercial operations? Smart technology can be used for appliances and security, and the same translates to manufacturing industries. An A/C unit can communicate with a business manager, and they can decide whether or not to activate cooling operations of the device. Also, the device can apprise owners whether maintenance is necessary. Just to round out the reader’s perspective here, a few things that can be used with smart tech in the home and in a given business include:

• Lighting
• Shades
• A/C
• Heating
• Sound Systems
• Security Systems
• Televisions
• Computers
• Refrigerators
• Laundry Machines
• Dishwashers
• Sprinkler Systems

…and the list goes on. IoT tech and other smart devices help individuals and businesses remain conveniently connected. Owing to the decentralized nature of such tech, the result is a secure, flexible, optimal access to associated tools. Information tech becomes much more straightforward and can produce more ROI than would be the case with tech that isn’t smart.

Hand in hand with streamlined connectivity is increased data capture, allowing for ever-expanding accuracy in energy use, preserving resources and increasing the capacity of a business to devote resources to bettering itself, as well as retaining competitive viability.

Smart Transportation

We’ve come a long way since postmen delivering parcels on horseback. Now there are trains, planes, and automobiles; and those vehicles break down all the time. Savvy resource management and smart tech are key in optimizing supply chains of all kinds. IoT applications allow for vertical integration such that supply lines can be managed from the top down in real time.

With Big Data, you can follow the progress of varying supply lines, determine which routes from point “A” to point “B” are best, monitor machine operations to keep fleet vehicles in top performance, and much more.

The European Union redefined transportation 12 years ago, in 2010, under the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) metric. Essentially, Information Technology (IT) has been applied to road transportation, optimizing infrastructure, personnel management, and vehicular use. Accordingly, involving your business in smart options incorporating IoT is key to retaining operational ability as this mode of transportation management becomes increasingly mainstream.

Smart Use of AI and ML

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) make it so that basic operations can be automated and improved as a given business requires. Web-based IoT data connectivity can be applied to all manner of devices such that a centralized computer somewhere can control them.

Essentially, the AI is rooted in your network and has the ability to manage devices automatically based on how you’ve programmed that AI to function. ML makes it so that automation and other tactics to make operations more streamlined are less likely to get algorithmically hemmed in. Now, computers still can’t think critically; but AI and ML have brought digitized “thinking” closer than ever to that of humans. At minimum, statistical analyses facilitate more accurate computational operations overall. As quantum computing develops, such operations could approach the thinking capacity of human users. In science fiction circles, this instance is breathlessly referred to as the “event horizon”, or “the singularity”.

Be that as it may, what is known presently is that through ML applications, AI can conceivably upgrade itself or the machines it “manages”. So if your ML-optimized network AI noticed a group of machines on the factory floor reaching manufacturer guidelines regarding maintenance, management could be notified, and a decision could be made as to whether said machines are in a situation where they must be serviced, or whether they can be retained on the floor a while yet.

Also, in many situations, automated machine servicing options can be designed into the AI, meaning certain functions of maintenance don’t necessarily need human oversight at all. This sort of AI-rooted ML optimization will increasingly define factories, transportation, and even the management of properties going forward. We’re not at the point where a fleet of drones with spray cans can be called to update the paint job on a building, but that’s coming. AI and ML will facilitate such options in the near future.

Positioning Your Business for Optimal Productivity

AI, ML, transportation, and property management benefit from smart technology systems incorporating IoT. To retain contemporary viability, it’s important to keep apprised of tech developments as they come. The smart route is a great way to do that.