With sensors becoming rapidly cheaper, manufacturing companies are expecting their massive sensor deployment to support vital services, such as predictive maintenance, automated supply chain management, operations & usage monitoring. However, billions of connected IoT devices, generating monumental amounts of data do not necessary result in smart systems or products. They do have a direct impact on cost. The InsightProducts project supports companies to improve their product and service offering through a cost-effective approach to relevant and qualitative product data acquisition and use in view of digital servitisation.

The digital economy is driven by hyperscale and microcare. It is absolutely essential that we offer scalable online services which take over tasks from consumers and/or business users, while also being user-friendly. We wanted to know the opinion of decision-makers about this and spoke with Nadja Desmet, founder of Socialemediaburo.be and Someflex and elected 'West-Flemish promising SME of the year'.

The lack of access to customer data should not be seen as a problem only pertaining to product manufacturers. Mainly for customers this results in several financial complications such as reactive instead of proactive maintenance, no access to future/novel product optimisations, and unavailability of customised services. The InsightProducts project supports companies to improve their product and service offering through qualitative product data acquisition and use in view of digital servitisation.

The revenue model of digital servitisation, in which physical products are enriched with digital services, offers product builders a range of new possibilities, but also presents new challenges. Sirris organises an inspiration workshop to provide companies that build physical products and want to explore the possibilities to take the step to smart, connected products with an overview of the inns and outs of digital servitisation and to give them the tools to get started.