The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us, and some corporations are at risk of getting squashed.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been with us for a while be it in disbursed initiatives, in little dots across the landscape and in innovative pushes by niche players. Now, it has become mainstream. If you are not ready yet, prepare yourselves to get steamrolled! Yes, get ready to be flattened out by a self-controlled, AI-driven algorithm that has just discovered another luddite caught in a time-warp!
Truly, the 4th IR is all around us, if not all over us. But let’s focus on something interesting – the sector that has often been dumped with the service sector, but has many industrial features: the Retail Sector!
A Few Vignettes To Take Note Of
• Amazon Go - where you can purchase products without being checked out by a cashier or a self-checkout station - may look like a distant speck in silicon valley, but not anymore! A clone has already been launched in nearby India. Watasale, is a fully-automated shop, that has sprung up in Kochi, Kerala, where you can just pick up an item and walk out. The price is automatically charged to your e-wallet.
• Zume Pizza in California (not again!), is letting robots make their pizzas. Custom-built robots not only spread sauce more evenly and use blazinghot ovens, they also cook over 50 pizzas during delivery to the customer.
• As early as 2016, a start-up called Flirtey partnered with Domino’s in New Zealand to launch their first commercial drone delivery service.
• Closer to home, Malaysia has its fair share of successes in the area wherein Ideotics, a Cyberjaya-based business, uses CCTV video, already installed in retail stores, to help them manage staff and stocks, besides giving deep insights into shopper profiles and behaviours. Other than that, Moving Walls, based in Technology Park Malaysia watches you, as you watch billboards! It captures digital footprints from multiple sources, measures people and personifies any physical location.
One pizza please, Monsieur Robot...Zume Pizza in California is letting robots make their pizzas.
