© Gartner September 2020
Gartner has supply chains disillusioned with IoT, placing IoT in its “‘trough of disillusionment” for supply chain technologies, even though it is widely deployed.
The ranking can be found in Gartner’s 2020 Hype Cycle for Supply Chain Strategy. Mike Burkett, a vice president distinguished analyst with the Gartner Supply Chain Practice, said many companies were implementing IoT in their supply chains, but struggling to define the best opportunities for using its measurement and tracking capabilities.
Gartner defines the trough of disillusionment stage in its Hype Cycle as: “Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.”
According to Gartner’s 2019 survey of the impact of digital business on the supply chain, 59 percent of respondents had partially or fully deployed IoT across the entire organisation, another 22 were piloting and 15 percent had not invested yet, but planned to do so in the next two years.
Burkett said: “Gartner estimates that installed IoT endpoints for manufacturing and natural resources industries are forecast to grow to 1.9 billion units in 2028. That is five times from 331.5 million units in 2018.”
IoT “transformational” says Gartner
He said Gartner had categorised IoT as a transformational technology because it has the potential to impact many areas of the supply chain in a broad and profound way.
“While the most obvious use cases are in manufacturing, IoT can also help improve customer service because it enables leaders to better understand customer needs. More mature organisations will also be able to create information-based products such as providing visibility and analytics for better asset usage.”
He advises supply chain leaders looking to implement or expand IoT capabilities to work with subject matter experts to identify supply chain processes that can benefit from IoT.
“In some cases, processes will have to be redesigned to accommodate IoT capabilities. If the subject matter expert is an external provider, supply chain leaders should always check how they might use – and possibly monetise – captured data.”
IoT in its own trough
Gartner has also produced a Hype Cycle for the Internet of Things 2020. Somewhat confusingly it rates IoT within its own hype cycle: just emerging from the trough of disillusionment.
By doing this Gartner is continuing a practice going back to at least 2014. In the intervening six years IoT has not made great progress, in both 2014 and 2015 it was at the peak of inflated expectations in its own Hype Cycle.
