Sammendrag
This thesis aims to find out insights for how new concepts for Industrial Internet can be developed in the early stage product development projects. The Industrial Internet is complex because it is mixing multiple disciplines. A product development team needs to master software, electronics, mechanics and data science in a connected environment. The research objective of this thesis is to test out multidisciplinary iterative low-cost prototyping in early stage Industrial Internet projects in order to collect and derive both practical and theoretical insights for industry and research to use. It does it both positivistic way, i.e. what did work based on real experiences from the six projects in this thesis, and also what did not work and what problems were found based on the same projects. The purpose of these insights is to provide a part of toolbox of technologies, tools and methodologies for developers in the industry and engineering design to tackle this complexity and make better products that achieve their purpose. The steps to achieve this objective is to hypothesize about how to prototype Industrial Internet projects, to showcase how to create new concepts for the context, and present their potential value through proof-of-concept prototypes as information for investment decisions considering to build complete systems.
The conclusions of this thesis include how the two main enablers for prototyping the Industrial Internet are firstly the new user-friendly technologies and tools, such as Arduino, that were developed late 2000s, helping to prototype the choice of core technology for projects and secondly, much more sophisticated toolbox of methodologies on process level to address unknown problems (rapid prototyping, iteration cycles, agile, scrum, design thinking, etc.).
During the projects while prototyping low-resolution physical concepts combined with relatively high resolution sensors technologies and exploratory data analysis turned out to be a powerful combination for developing early stage Industrial Internet devices: This combination enables faster learning and yields innovative product concepts. The gist is to apply Wayfaring method to connected products and to iterate with the data and create new ideas based on insights from the data analysis.
The main point for prototyping the Industrial Internet products is the intent of putting the decision maker in a better decision position. Rather than fixing the requirements and the architecture directly, we are proposing an extended prototyping phase in order to come up with better decisions that are based on understanding more of the problem and the solution space, and eventually understand what is a good solution in its context. It is in key importance to understand which variables are actually having an effect in the project. The purpose of prototyping is to reduce uncertainties in the project, e.g. which parameters we are dealing with. As the result of the extended prototyping phase, we should have a proofof- concept prototype and a lot more information about technologies, costs and opportunities to make the real investment decision for the R&D project.
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