SCRUTINIZING THE DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS OF SMART PRODUCTS: A PRACTICAL EVALUATION IN YACHTING

The collection and use of data are of increasing importance not only in virtual worlds but also for real goods. New products operationalize this principle and integrate sensors, actuators and microcomputers into analog products to enable sophisticated features such as context-awareness or connectivity with other devices. The underlying concept is being discussed as Smart Product and aims for the automation of activities, right up to autonomization of entire products. This article raises design specifications from existing literature and instantiates Smart Products in sailing. We discuss the application of the design specifications with sailing professionals in order to evaluate its practical value and to identify further benefits. The results affirmed that sailboats can be transformed into Smart Products by the integration of information technology. However, it also turned out that additional benefits can only be tapped by the integration of further stakeholders in a systemic perspective

Multi-perspective digitization architecture for the Internet of Things

Social networks, smart portable devices, Internet of Things (IoT) on base of technologies like analytics for big data and cloud services are emerging to support flexible connected products and agile services as the new wave of digital transformation. Biological metaphors of living and adaptable ecosystems with service-oriented enterprise architectures provide the foundation for self-optimizing and resilient run-time environments for intelligent business services and related distributed information systems. We are extending Enterprise Architecture (EA) with mechanisms for flexible adaptation and evolution of information systems having distributed IoT and other micro-granular digital architecture to support next digitization products, services, and processes. Our aim is to support flexibility and agile transformation for both IT and business capabilities through adaptive digital enterprise architectures. The present research paper investigates additionally decision mechanisms in the context of multi-perspective explorations of enterprise services and Internet of Things architectures by extending original enterprise architecture reference models with state of art elements for architectural engineering and digitization