Business Excellence in a knowledge-driven Industry 4.0 world

Offered By: Hong Kong Polytechnic University via edX

Course Description

Overview

Twenty-first century societies are highly connected, digitalized and networked. According to the International Data Corporation, by 2025 there will be 175 zetabytes of digital assets on the web. These include data, multimedia files, computing resources, software and more. There also social networks, many of which are purposely cultivated, which serve as a great source of collaboration and harnessing of collective wisdom. Meanwhile, Industry 4.0, or the Industrial Internet, provides an abundance of new opportunities for deploying intelligent applications in areas such as automation, monitoring, correction, decision, prediction and customization. Properly sourced data and harnessed knowledge are crucial for enabling business excellence. Competitive advantage is no longer achieved through an organization’s internal operational excellence and competition with rival firms, but through competency building, harnessing collective wisdom, and collaboration through networks. New value chains that lead to superior customer experience are often realized by applying newfound technological knowledge to fields such as processes management, machine learning, Big Data, automated decision-making and business model innovation.

Balancing theories and practice, and supplemented by in-depth case studies and practical illustrations, this program equips you with the skills and knowledge to strategize investments in digital transformations in an Industry 4.0 world. It covers everything from mining data, harnessing/sharing knowledge in organizations, leveraging the cloud for collaboration, competency building, innovation and fostering learning communities to identifying the skills today’s knowledge workers need. Case studies focus on healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, engineering, education, and the public sector. Learners may also join a vibrant online learning community made up of current and past learners, to co-learn together both during and after the program.

Based on two proven courses that have been on offer for the past three to five years, this program is designed to help managers and consultants from a non-technical background decide where to invest and design their digital transformation strategies in connected, networked societies, and develop smart products, services, systems in manufacturing, logistics, transportation, engineering, businesses, education and the home. Most learners who took the two MOOCs that form part of this program had backgrounds in product development, engineering, research, human resources, IT, logistics, and corporate planning.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Knowledge Management and Big Data in Business

Learn about the integrative power of knowledge management, Big Data and Cloud Computing, and how they impact the new business era.

Course 2: Industry 4.0: How to Revolutionize your Business

An introduction to the fourth industrial revolution, it's major systems and technologies and how new products and services will impact business and society.

Courses

2 reviews
8 weeks, 6-8 hours a week, 6-8 hours a week
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The business landscape is changing so rapidly that traditional management, business and computing courses do not meet the needs for the next generation of workers in the business world. Most traditional methods are of a repetitive, rule-based nature and will be gradually replaced by Artificial Intelligence. In the knowledge era, the most value added job will be to manage knowledge, which includes how knowledge is created, mined, processed, shared and reused in different trades and industry. At the same time, the amount of data and information (prerequisites of knowledge) is exploding exponentially. By 2020, IDC projects that the size of the digital universe will reach 40 zetabytes from all sources including, websites, weblog, sensors, and social media. Digitalisation, Cloud Computing, Big data will transform how we live, work and even think in a Networked Economy. These trends and more will have a profound effect on how we see the world and create policies. In this course, the following topics and more are covered:
- What is knowledge management?
- How is knowledge captured, elicited, organized and created in business?
- Managing knowledge at the enterprise, SMBs and personal levels
- Digitalisation and its impact on the workplace, collaborations and new value creation
- What is big data and how can we use data analytics from a laymen perspective?
- What is Open Linked Data and how can it support machine reasoning?
- How can new knowledge be mined from big data?
- What are the technical and social problems with big data?
The Cloud as a canvas for service design and business model re-invention
What are examples of applications and case studies?

The course is offered by the Knowledge Management and Innovation Research Center (KMIRC) of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Most of our research is company and industry based. Capabilities and competencies of the KMIRC are further strengthened by the international alliances it has formed with leading practitioners, many of which are regarded as members of the "Hall of Fame" in knowledge management, and renowned worldwide. The course is suitable for participants with a background in humanities, management, social science, physical science or engineering. No prior technical background is needed.
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6 weeks, 6-8 hours a week, 6-8 hours a week
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We have witnessed the power of mechanization in the early nineteen century, automation in the seventies, information and the internet in the last decades. But now, the adaptation of connected intelligence into the business and social fabrics is advancing at an astonishing speed, which will completely change the way we conduct business.

In this course,we will discuss changes/predictions we forsee in the future, such as:
- The credit card business will fade out gradually
- All currency will be bitcoin
- Whereas traditional internet gives rise to digital divide, the mobile internet will narrow the wealth gap
- Most e-business models will become obsolete, leaving customer to factory (C2F)
- No more talents to hide except partners
- Mobile phones will be outdated and replaced by augmented virtual reality (AVR)
- Big corporates will transform to big platforms
- The birth of real Internet economics
- The death of global manufacturing to networked and dispersed manufacturing
This course will explain how these changes will be brought about by the extensive use of digital intelligence, which will be available on mobile, internet, and pervasive computing as homes, offices and factories become a well knitted cyber-physical system.

Enabling tools such as Cloud Computing, Big Data, Internet of Things and Cyber Physical Systems are introduced. Automation, intelligence and collaborations are also discussed with particular reference to smart manufacturing, smart products/services and smart cities, and their opportunities and challenges.

This is not a technical course; instead part of the focus is on organizational readiness, skills gaps and competencies for knowledge workers to fully leverage the power of Industry 4.0.

Suitable for learners from all disciplines and interested in the mega changes to our society.

Taught by

Norbert Gronau, Susanne Durst, Doug Vogel, Eric Tsui, W.B. Lee, Klaus Tochtermann, Usama Fayyad and Jay Lee