Industries
Where your product operates changes how it is engineered
A sensor on a kitchen wall, a unit on a running machine and a flight controller meet different limits: who installs them, how they connect, how long they stay, and who may act on them. Start with the place your product will live in.
Find your environmentWhy the place matters
The product is half the system. The place is the other half
Each place changes which engineering question has to be settled first.
- Who sets it up?
At home, someone who is not an engineer, on a network that changes without notice. On a running machine, an installer who is not always the engineer who designed the unit, on equipment that was there first.
- What does the link look like?
An aircraft’s radio or Wi-Fi path drops in signal shadow. In a care setting a connection drops differently, and the product has to save, queue and recover.
- Who may act?
In an energy product, observing, configuring and approving are different permissions. Around existing field equipment, observing a system does not give control of the process.
The places
Find the place your product will live
Each page starts from different questions. Filled squares mark the ones that page treats as defining; open squares are not part of how that page frames the problem.
Where people are in the room
The product lives with people who did not build it and may not be technical.
Smart Home & Consumer IoT
Who sets this up, and on whose network?
- People
- Link
- Fit
- Time
- Change
Healthcare
Who is it for, and where does engineering stop?
- People
- Link
- Change
- Authority
Where something is already running
The product joins machines, assets and systems that were there first.
Energy
What was measured, when, and who may act on it?
- Fit
- Time
- Authority
Manufacturing
Where does the signal come from, and where does the unit live?
- People
- Fit
Oil & Gas
Where does the existing field system end and your software begin?
- Link
- Fit
- Change
- Authority
Where the product is out on its own
The product ends up beyond the reach of the people who built it.
Agriculture
Who installs it, and what happens when nobody looks at it for long stretches?
- People
- Time
- Change
Drones & UAV
What can the aircraft carry, power and still link?
- Link
- Fit
- Change
Automotive & Mobility
What does the unit do when the vehicle is out of coverage?
- Link
- Change
What stays the same
The place changes the brief. The seams stay the engineering
- The seams
Device, connection, cloud and app still have to behave as one product.
- The update path
How a product is changed once it is installed is designed before it ships.
- The order of questions
Only the question that comes first changes with the place.
Between two places
If your product sits between two places, start where it spends its life
Then read the neighbouring page for what the product hands over.
A device in a home that a clinician reads
- Healthcare when a clinician or a care setting decides how it is used
- Smart Home & Consumer IoT when the household decides
Software added to equipment that already runs
- Manufacturing for machines on a floor
- Oil & Gas for existing field equipment
- Energy for assets with measured flows
An aircraft working over fields
- Drones & UAV for the aircraft
- Agriculture for the installation it serves
A unit that travels with what it monitors
- Automotive & Mobility when the product is a vehicle that leaves coverage
- Manufacturing when the unit is fixed to equipment at a site
Where to go next
You know where it operates. Next: what it has to become, and who engineers it
What does the product have to become?
- A product that has to behave as one system across device, cloud and appConnected Product Engineering
- Equipment that is already installed and has to stay observableIndustrial IoT & Intelligence
- Energy assets whose visible state has to lead to a governed responseSmart Energy Operations
- A health sensor’s readings that have to reach a clinician’s viewIoMT & Healthcare Monitoring
- Systems that sense, decide and act in the physical worldAutonomous & Intelligent Physical Systems
How much of the engineering do you hand over?
- From one discipline to the whole connected productSee where Indeema can take responsibility
Not sure yet? Product Discovery & Technical Strategy is where that decision gets made.
Bring the product and the place it will be installed.