Industry 4.0 – Digitalization and Blockchain examples from Oracle NetSuite

I continue sharing my thoughts and comments from SuiteWorld 2019 from last week in Las Vegas. PLM industry is full of Industry 4.0 messages and I was very much interested to see how Industry 4.0 stories, technological buzzwords, and use cases are presented by Oracle NetSuite.

I found these examples in the session combining all “cool” stuff together – Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Industry 4.0… It is hard to explain why these things were combined together. Probably coolness factor 🙂

Digitization is a big deal in the industry focusing on transactions and manufacturing shop management. I captured the following slide showing use cases for digital warehouse – predictive monitoring, failure and maintenance.

I found interesting similarity between warehouse digitization and some MRO IoT presentations coming from PLM vendors. These stories can clash in the future.

Even more interesting was blockchain story. The slide name Ready to Go Blockchain applications is introducing you to the some examples of Blockchain technology NetSuite is providing to customers.

My favorite was monitor transactions and movements of assets or good across organizations. In the world of distributed manufacturing, it can be a very important function that can facilitate future contract manufacturing and distribution of manufacturing operations.

What is my conclusion? Both PLM and ERP industries will eventually clash on some of the application of advanced technologies. Manufacturing world will stop to be linear and siloed. It is becoming connected and circular. Industry is becoming more connected and dependent. Siloes such ERP and PLM will become less relevant. Connected cloud platforms will become more important. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: Oracle NetSuite paid for my trip to SuiteWorld and some of the meals, but at no way influenced the content of this article.

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud-based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.

Image by VIN JD from Pixabay