Zenith Consulting Services (ZCS) is a Melbourne based research and development organisation that is engaged in offering innovative solutions to the most reputed healthcare, manufacturing and production companies across the world. ZCS has been set up by two management graduates from Harvard Business School, Neil Wagner and Michel Santier. Since its inception, ZCS has been able to expand its business at a rapid rate in the both local and global market. At present, the organisation has been operating with its 24 branches in Australia and 10 other branches located in New Zealand, UK and USA. It has employee strength of about 4500. Based on the recent figures, ZCS has recorded a turnover of 3.2 million AUD in the financial year ended on 2015.
The mission of the organisation is to offer the most pioneering solution to its client. For achieving this goal, the management of the company has created an organisational culture that encourages all the staff to think out of the box. With this organisational culture, all the employees are allowed to share their views and suggest something new to the management. In the last few years, the organisation has been facing stiff competition from the companies like Supernova Consulting Services, DHB Consulting Services and Ricera Consulting Services that operate in the same domain. Hence, the management of ZCS has emphasised on continuous innovation for maintaining its sustainability. In order to achieve competitive goals through innovation, ZCS has invested a significant portion of its profits in the research and development (R&D). The managers of R&D division of the organisation have identified the importance of incorporating Internet of Things (IoT) into their products and services. Most importantly, the managers of this section have recognised that within the next few years IoT will dominate every sectors of the society.
This report intends to focus on the concepts of IoT and its applications in the present times from the healthcare, manufacturing and production domain. In this report, some of the potential applications of IoT that ZCS may look into in the next 5 years have been discussed. These applications have been designed for providing the innovative solutions to the healthcare organisations. On the other hand, social, legal and ethical aspects of such innovations have also been discussed in the report. The report has included some suggestions that may help the organisations like ZCS to deal with the probable risk factors associated with IoT.
Internet of Things (IoT) can be defined as the system where computing devices, mechanical and digital instruments are connected with the internet for the purpose of transferring data without human to human or human to computer interaction (Wortmann & Flüchter, 2015). In this regards, Xia, et al. (2012) defied IoT as a system where the internet is connected to the physical world with the help of sensors. On the other hand, Ashton (2013) mentioned that IoT enables the organisations to design an environment where the physical equipments, machineries or vehicles can be embedded with electronic devices, specific software or sensors. In such cases, network connectivity allows the physical objectives to connect with electronic devices for the purpose of data transfer or exchanging information (Kortuem, et al. 2011). Collaboration of cloud computing and data collection instruments has enabled the IoT to function in an effective manner (Iera, et al. 2011).
The concept of IoT has emerged from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems and micro services (Conti, 2012). Moreover, the increased dependency and usage of internet has played a vital role in incorporating the ideas of IoT (Baoyun, 2014). The concept of IoT has been established by Kevin Ashton in the year 1999 during the presentation of Procter & Gamble. Welbourne, et al. (2014) mentioned that limited time, attention and accuracy of the people in the recent times can be considered as the major factors that create problems for them to capture real time data. This problem has created the essence for gathering data without help from the people. Supporting this fact, Weber (2011) mentioned that IoT has created a self-dependent system where data can be stored and transmitted without the help of human. As a result of that a significant reduction of wastage, loss and cost from the organisational perspectives has been observed (Jing, et al. 2014).
Some of the major applications of IoT can be found in the healthcare, manufacturing and production based organisations. Over the recent times, some of the major applications of IoT have been found in the smartphones and wearable data collection devices (Atzori, Iera & Morabito, 2014). For instance, smart watches are a specific application of IoT where, the physical activities of human like heart rate; blood pressure etc can be measured. With the help of IoT, the Bluetooth devices can be synchronised with the smartphones and enables the users to transfer data within a short span of time. On the other hand, IoT has a wide range of application in the home appliances. For example, smart refrigerators can sense the requirement of vegetables or grocery items and prepare a shopping list for the users. Smart air conditioners or heaters can automatically switch off or switch on in accordance to the specified room temperature. In the case of manufacturing and production industries, the IoT has been used to prepare the stock level of the goods (Li, Da Xu, & Wang, 2013). In case of the low stock level, the sensors send reorder message to the suppliers or sends signals to the production managers when the particular machines are required to be repaired.
