The workplace of the future that we imagined at Konica Minolta is today becoming a reality. It’s a digitally connected environment in which personalization is enabled, collaboration is improved and data sharing and information management are automated.
Konica Minolta is committed to playing a key role as a digital-workplace solutions provider. With Workplace Hub and its next-generation platform Cognitive Hub, we aspire to empower our customers with tools and capabilities for them to be flexible and adaptive, and to make great decisions. At the core of our development, we are placing Internet of Things (IoT), assistive Artificial Intelligence (AI) services and data analytics as key elements to connect people, spaces and devices. We also look to transform them into a digital cortex through which information flows easily and our customers can derive actionable insights from data collected about the overall context.
AI and the IoT for Well-being in Digital Workplaces
Konica Minolta is currently focusing on IoT and AI-enabled platforms to extend the network of human interfaces, enhance the collaboration amongst individuals and teams, and ultimately provide them with assistive services that are immediately and automatically actionable.
We see AI as the ultimate User Interface—a layer through which users may access a variety of semantic-based and smart data services that offer improved and more-efficient ways for working and collaborating. With the ecosystem of solutions through Workplace Hub and in the future with Cognitive Hub, we aim to bridge physical and digital worlds (Figure 1). By connecting IoT devices with assistive AI services, we will be able to break the boundaries between digital and physical worlds to empower our customers within different workplaces, from offices to hospitals to manufacturers.
Collaboration in the Office Setting
According to several internal research studies1, Konica Minolta identified some of the most-relevant challenges systems such as Workplace Hub or Cognitive Hub aim at overcoming. In doing so, we hope to provide opportunities for employees to increase their creativity, efficiency and satisfaction within the workplace and their overall well-being. Therefore, exploiting cognitive services and data analytics, our solutions comprise the following services:
- Task management. An augmented, intelligent system enables employees to focus on tasks that are more relevant to their company’s overall objectives, rather than ones they perceive as more urgent.
- Integrated overview of information. Instead of organizing data in multiple folders with the consequent duplication of information, an automated system focuses on a task-centric approach, enabling teams and individuals to achieve a more-integrated and efficient management of data.
- Information-overload coordination. The coordination of many sources of information, including management of documents, emails and chat conversations, will leverage an optimized organization of tasks, as well as their deadlines and processes, and will enable a deeper understanding of the context in which teams and individuals collaborate.
The Human Factor in Digital Manufacturing
In recent years, the increased complexity of the manufacturing sector, in combination with the introduction of advanced technologies such as IoT, Robotics and AI, defined what is known as Digital Manufacturing that is linked to a diverse set of macro trends (Figure 2).
Konica Minolta is entering this context, focusing on the human factor2 to address customers’ problems and identify valuable solutions. Leveraging the manufacturing competencies of the company, our laboratories are committed to bringing more specialized components and technologies towards specific solutions, with a focus on Assistive AI services. Today with Workplace Hub, we offer our devices, platforms and services to simplify IT. Tomorrow with Cognitive Hub, we will orchestrate Assistive AI services, intelligent systems and applications that we develop with third-party services—all with the intention to create new value for our customers, making their everyday life smarter, better, and more creative.
The redefinition of the manufacturing place, with the introduction of advanced technologies, specifically focuses on three core trend opportunities, highlighted by worldwide innovation communities3:
Well-being and Stress Detection
In Europe, about 225 million people aged 15-74 are economically active and employed. According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work4, injuries and accidents at work cost $476€ billion ($535.9 billion USD) a year. From a business perspective, increasing the safety of, and health in, the workplace reduces long-term costs by improving workers’ productivity, reducing absenteeism, reducing compensation payments and meeting public and private sectors requirements.
As a clear illustration of the advantages of this approach, the safety and health program of the German butchery sector resulted in the following: savings of $4.81€ ($5.39 USD) for every euro invested, 1,000 fewer accidents and a reduction in costs of 40 million euros (44.8 million USD) during the six-year study.
Autonomous Things
Autonomous things, such as robots, are powered by AI to complete and facilitate tasks and activities traditionally performed by humans. They operate with varying degrees of capability, coordination, and intelligence. For example, a robot could fully operate autonomously or in collaboration with virtually every application, service, or IoT object that incorporates some form of AI system. In other words, robotic systems are capable of operating in coordination with other intelligent systems or alone. However, fully autonomous things will not entirely replace human activity, and will instead integrate human ability which may trigger further human actions. In the context of manufacturing, autonomous things replace humans’ repetitive, tedious, tiring and sometimes dangerous activities. Autonomous production centers use humans for final quality checks, as well as general control and management of machines, equipment and facilities.
Augmented Analytics
The data scientist’s role is the gateway for the innovation of tomorrow, with ever-greater amounts of data to collect, process and clean, and analyze—data from which to draw strategic decisions or at least input towards such decisions. Given the vast amount of data, the key challenge will be the ability to select and combine the right data. Hence, augmented analytics represents an ability to utilize automated algorithms to navigate more solutions and reveal patterns that may not be visible otherwise.
By 2020, about 50% of data science tasks will be automated, resulting in increased productivity and broader usage of data and analytics by citizen data scientists (non-professional data scientists)5. With the increasing number and quality of multiple data sets collected by these scientists, data insights will be broadly available across businesses, including analysts, decision makers and operational workers.
The workplace of the future will be digitally connected and built on a foundation of AI that will drive just about everything, from IoT data gathering to decision making, transitioning the workplace from information-based consumption to information-based decision support. Integrating both AI and IoT solutions into the workplace will boost a business’ efficiency, productivity and bottom line.
1 The future of User Interfaces, March 2018. Konica Minolta Labs Europe https://research.konicaminolta.eu/white-papers/the-future-of-user-interfaces/
2 The human factor in digital manufacturing, April 2019. Konica Minolta Labs Europe https://research.konicaminolta.eu/white-papers/
3 Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019 – https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-10-15-gartner-identifies-the-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2019
4 OSH – Occupational Safety and Health https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2014:332:FIN
5 How Citizen Data Science Can Maximize Self-Service Analytics and Extend Data Science (Gartner, September 2018)
